I had the same thought, including menolly's thought of using links or lynx. This ignores one important fact, though. Session management and screen transitions are entirely different under CGI than under a text-mode, curses-like application. You're talking about multiple stateless HTTP connections vs. one self-contained application that repeatedly updates its own terminal.

The infrastructure may be no big deal, but the differences in working in a stateful vs. a stateless progamming model can be. There are plenty of workarounds to HTTP transport being stateless, including cookies and session ID hashes. Having a workaround isn't the same as keeping it all in one process, with a connection and variables that stay intact when the screen changes.

I don't mind working with HTTP's shortcomings, because most of my work ends up being delivered over the web. It's just part of life. However, when I have the chance to work with a local application and to simplify connection, session, and state retention management, I'm slow to give those up.