JargonFile/entries/C Programmer's Disease.txt
2014-04-26 16:54:15 +01:00

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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.