I believe you're refering to the Curses library which was definitely created before graphical user interfaces were common. Although I've only just started to search, I've not found a good resource discussing the origin of the name "curses". I suspect it was probably a combination of a playing with the words "cursor" and very likely the amount of frustration, thus "cursing", done when trying to write any sort of "graphical interface" back in those days.

So, while it's definitely not a joke in the strict sense you meant, it easily could be a bit of play on words.

Back when the curses library was all the rage, "graphics" simulated with text characters was a semi-respected medium.

-Scott

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