The Project that Will Not Die

We delivered a project last year. We agreed to do it for a flat fee because my then-manager was silly enough to agree to it, and I was too new to know better. This was an especially bad move considering that no one to our knowledge had ever tried to do with our product what we were proposing. When we delivered it, the client released only half the agreed payment because we couldn't meet their performance and stability requirements. My boss put me to work a month ago, trying to close this out and get the rest of the money.

Well, the program will currently handle only 105 requests before it crashes. The whole thing is one giant memory leak. And the leaks are all in third-party libraries: some are impossible to replace, while others are merely extremely difficult. It took me long enough to track this down that I missed going to the gym.

I am not happy.