restriction
A {bug} or design error that limits a program's capabilities,
and which is sufficiently egregious that nobody can quite work
up enough nerve to describe it as a {feature}. Often used
(especially by {marketroid} types) to make it sound as though
some crippling bogosity had been intended by the designers all
along, or was forced upon them by arcane technical constraints
of a nature no mere user could possibly comprehend (these
claims are almost invariably false).
Old-time hacker Joseph M. Newcomer advises that whenever
choosing a quantifiable but arbitrary restriction, you should
make it either a power of 2 or a power of 2 minus 1. If you
impose a limit of 17 items in a list, everyone will know it is
a random number - on the other hand, a limit of 15 or 16
suggests some deep reason (involving 0- or 1-based indexing in
binary) and you will get less {flamage} for it. Limits which
are round numbers in base 10 are always especially suspect.
[{Jargon File}]