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crawling horror


crawling horror: n. Ancient crufty hardware or software that is
   kept obstinately alive by forces beyond the control of the hackers
   at a site.  Like dusty deck or gonkulator, but connotes
   that the thing described is not just an irritation but an active
   menace to health and sanity.  "Mostly we code new stuff in C, but
   they pay us to maintain one big FORTRAN II application from
   nineteen-sixty-X that's a real crawling horror...."  Compare
   WOMBAT.