[em500]

    clear
    echo "Hello there. I'm a computer. What's your name?"
    read G
    echo "Hello $G. You are welcome to computer land."

    while true
    do
    echo ""
    echo "What would you like to do today?"
    echo "1) Say something random"
    echo "2) Make a maze"
    echo "3) Exit"
    echo "Enter your selection"
    read S
      if [ "$S" = "1" ]; then
        say $( head -n $((7*RANDOM)) /usr/share/dict/words | tail -n 1 )
      elif [ "$S" = "2" ]; then
        for i in {1..3000}; do
          if (($RANDOM>16384)); then printf '/'; else printf '\'; fi
        done
      elif [ "$S" = "3" ]; then
        echo "Bye."
        exit 
      else 
        echo "Try again." 
      fi
    done

This doesn't seem much different than the BASIC example to me. I think only the lack of GOTO in shell scripts makes this look slightly more complicated (requiring either putting all the statements in the if ... elif parts or defining functions).

I honestly don't see how a Python or Ruby version would be much better than a shell version for this. Perhaps you can show by example?

[TimTheTinker]

You do have a point - that's not too bad, but to my eyes it's still more arcane than Python and Ruby (spoken as someone who has written less than 30 shell scripts in my life).

I still contend that Ruby and Python are far more accessible than shell scripting, because they are very popular, especially Python, cross-platform, and less arcane.

[em500]

For my own curiosity I did the simplest Python version I could think of to see how it would compare:

    import os
    import random
    import sys
    
    os.system("clear")
    print "Hello there. I'm a computer. What's your name?"
    G = raw_input()
    print "Hello " + G + ". You are welcome to computer land."
  
    while True:
        print ""
        print "What would you like to do today?"
        print "1) Say something random"
        print "2) Make a maze"
        print "3) Exit"
        print "Enter your selection"
        S = raw_input()
        if S == "1":
            F = open("/usr/share/dict/words").readlines()
            W = random.choice(F)
            os.system("say {}".format(W))
        elif S == "2":
            for i in range(1, 3000):
                if random.random()>0.5:
                    sys.stdout.write("/")
                else: 
                    sys.stdout.write("\\")
        elif S == "3":
            print "Bye."
            exit()
        else:
            print "Try again."

It looks like a tossup to me, all 3 versions have their own share of magic that will confuse the beginner. I say this as someone who reads and writes a lot more python than bash daily.