The second-system effect or second-system syndrome is the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to be succeeded by over-engineered, bloated systems, due to inflated expectations and overconfidence.[1]
The phrase was first used by Fred Brooks in his book The Mythical Man-Month, first published in 1975. It described the jump from a set of simple operating systems on the IBM 700/7000 series to OS/360 on the 360 series,[2] which happened in 1964.[3]
See also
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- Anti-pattern
- Feature creep
- Inner-platform effect
- Osborne effect
- Sophomore slump
- Unix philosophy
- Examples in information technology: IPv6 deployment, Taligent, Workplace OS, Copland, Rhapsody
References
edit- ^ Raymond, Eric. "Second-system effect". The Jargon File. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
- ^ This article is based on material taken from Second-system+effect at the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.
- ^ Brooks, Frederick P. Jr. (1975). "The Second-System Effect". The Mythical Man-Month: essays on software engineering. Addison Wesley Longman. pp. 53–58. ISBN 0-201-00650-2.
External links
edit- Spolsky, Joel (April 6, 2000). "Things You Should Never Do, Part I". Joel on Software. Retrieved October 15, 2021.
- Turoff, Adam (August 21, 2007). "Notes on Haskell". Retrieved October 15, 2021.
- Gunton, Neil (July 20, 2008). "Rewrites Considered Harmful?". Retrieved October 15, 2021.
- Fowler, Chad. "The Big Rewrite". Archived from the original on December 8, 2016.
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