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.