[IH8MYP1GVERMENT]

Here is my case:

A database used by military made by a Senior (programmer) with ancient programming language from the 80s. He used hundreds of columns for the software to use instead of a new table and when there is a new case of variable needed, he created a new column.

[user0000]

What you have described might be a common pattern. I saw a project based on C using MySQL. Each time a property is stored, saved, a new column is created. And regular users would be able to define those properties.
To be a little bit more precise, users were able to create chat channels and they define the names. So, each name was a new column.