Short Answer: In programming, this error comes up when you’re trying to initialize an object or an array with a variable size. The thing is C, C++, and some other languages, need to know the size at compile time. So, you can’t initialize an array or object with a size that is not a constant or determined at runtime.

Detailed Explanation: In programming, you may encounter an error saying “variable-sized object may not be initialized”. This typically happens when you are trying to initialize an array or an object where the size is defined by a variable, and not a constant value which can be determined at compile time.

For instance, if you were to write a code like this:

int n = 10;
int arr[n] = {0};

You’d encounter this error message. Here, you’re trying to initialize an array ‘arr’ of size ‘n’, where ‘n’ is a variable. While ‘n’ is given a value of 10 here, it’s still a variable and could technically have any value.

The C and C++ languages, among others, prohibit this because they need to know the size of an array at compile time and not at runtime. Making the size dependent on a variable would mean the actual size of the array isn’t known until the program is actually running, which is not how these languages work.

The remedy for this would be to define ‘n’ as a constant, like:

const int N = 10;
int arr[N] = {0};

This way, the size of ‘arr’ is determined at compile time, and the error will be resolved. Another alternative would be to dynamically allocate the array at runtime, using malloc or new operator, then you have to manually delete it when you’re done using it to prevent memory leaks.