C Programmer's Disease
C Programmer_s Disease: n. The tendency of the undisciplined C programmer to set arbitrary but
supposedly generous static limits on table sizes (defined, if you_re lucky,
by constants in header files) rather than taking the trouble to do proper
dynamic storage allocation. If an application user later needs to put 68
elements into a table of size 50, the afflicted programmer reasons that he
or she can easily reset the table size to 68 (or even as much as 70, to
allow for future expansion) and recompile. This gives the programmer the
comfortable feeling of having made the effort to satisfy the user_s
(unreasonable) demands, and often affords the user multiple opportunities
to explore the marvelous consequences of
fandango on core. In severe cases of the disease, the programmer cannot
comprehend why each fix of this kind seems only to further disgruntle the
user.
Courtesy of 'The Jargon File 4.4.7'
