You might have to do some custom work to make some of the "history" accessible.

For example, Stanford's CS144 class uses a patched version of the Linux kernel to enable people to create their own TCP/IP clients[1]. I'm sure that if stuff like this becomes really inaccessible for newbies, similar modifications will be done for other applications to allow simpler concepts to be taught and explored.

[1] http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs144/assignments/ctcp/assignm...