Developers deal with fragmentation all the time—not just in code, but in real life too. Small balances scattered across systems that never quite add up to something usable.
In my case, I had $31.86 spread across 9 different gift cards.
The issue: fragmentation
Gift cards and payment systems usually don’t play well together:
- no merging multiple cards into one balance
- no transferring value between cards
- often limited to one card per checkout
- plus minimum purchase requirements So the value exists, but it’s useless.
What I did
I donated the full $31.86 here:
https://www.mannafoodproject.org/donate-online/
They turn donations into direct food support.
Why I love The Mana Food Project
Many platforms have hidden minimum donations (often $4–$10), which makes small fragmented balances harder to fully use.
This one didn’t enforce a strict minimum, so I could donate everything cleanly.
Reflection
- As a human (donor)
It feels good to be a donor, especially knowing the money is actually going to help someone instead of sitting unused.
- As a developer
This is a fragmentation issue—small, unused blocks scattered within RAM—and rather than attempting to defragment them, it's more efficient to allocate small-sized memory chunks into these available gaps, avoiding the overhead of reorganization.
