I neither ignore it or assume I can do it better. I just did it because it was fun and satisfying.

I don’t believe I could do better than curses/ncurses. What I do believe, however, is that replicating the work isn’t always bloat. If you’re only going to use a small subset of the library anyway, replicating a bit of it might actually be less bloaty than including the whole thing. That said, when in doubt using pre-made solutions surely is better _if_ you’re working in a professional/production-grade environment. I on the other hand am just playing around and seeing how far I can take this.