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.
[glossary]