If I have a machine with many gigabytes of memory and ~100MB of stack space available (the latter requires some tuning at thread-creation time with current runtimes, but the former is frankly routine)? Yes. Yes, I'd expect my software to handle it correctly.
The fact that you think otherwise is precisely the problem. If you don't want to write correct software (which, frankly, isn't any harder than writing broken parsers) you might want to reconsider your career choice.
OK, Lets see. Do you think you should be able to create a billion files on a default ext3 file system without issues? Because you won't be able to, even if you have the space for them.
Unfortunately, sometimes you have to put in some sane limits, because of constraints elsewhere.
To call software that has sane limits to cover 99.9% of usage patterns "broken" is pretty silly.
If you think as a software developer, you never have to make compromises, or make a tough call on what 99.9% of users will do, you're being naive.
Fair enough. I was terribly impolite. Though to be fair, sticks (via public shaming, in this case I guess) work as well as carrots often. The "coming to the defense of clearly broken software" thing (which happens far, far too much) is a pet peeve. People who make arguments like that are generally the ones who write code like Opera's parser.
Public shaming also only works if the shamer knows they are right. I love giving a shaming as much as anyone else (maybe more?), but it's not a posture that's compatible with learning. It requires becoming entrenched.
The fact that you think otherwise is precisely the problem. If you don't want to write correct software (which, frankly, isn't any harder than writing broken parsers) you might want to reconsider your career choice.