title: ncurses novice - starting out with GNU C
body: <p><strong>A simpler life</strong></p>
  
  <p>I am returning to C to help reinvigorate my programming lobe. The last time I learned to program I was at college working with Turbo C on MSDOS.  Simple ASCII animations became an obsession once I found Borland's friendly <code>&lt;conio.h&gt;</code> one include away.  A lot of fun was had with the <code>gotoxy</code> and <code>textcolor</code> functions and it wasn't long before I was writing games like snake and pong.  It was a very rewarding way to learn a language, and each game pushed me further as I got more ambitious.</p>
  
  <p><strong>ncurses</strong></p>
  
  <p>I'd like start with similar game type projects.  Today though, I'm on a mac with a dusty linux machine in the corner. I could launch my beloved Turbo C in dosbox (an ubiquitous enough platform) but I want to learn C such that I can develop something that compiles naturally on any BSD or unix platform. I've been told that ncurses is the way forward but the GNU site has largely gone over my head. Back in the day I had my friendly <code>textmode</code> function and I was a<code>print</code> expression away from pong.  ncurses seems a lot more powerful.</p>
  
  <p><strong>whoosh</strong></p>
  
  <p>There must be many people who've been in this situation. I'm looking for a relevant tutorial or resource that will help me grapple with what ncurses is and how to work with it.  Any tips or similar stories would be of great interest too!</p>