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}.