Second-system effect

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

• 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

1. Raymond, Eric. "Second-system effect". The Jargon File. Retrieved June 24, 2013.
2. 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.
3. 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

• 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.