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, which happened in 1964.[2]

See also

• Anti-pattern
• Feature creep
• Inner-platform effect
• Osborne effect
• Software bloat
• Sophomore slump
• Unix philosophy

References

1. Raymond, Eric. "Second-system effect". The Jargon File. Retrieved 24 Jun 2013.
2. Brooks Jr., Frederick P. (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

• "Things You Should Never Do", by Joel Spolsky, about the Netscape project
• Rewriting Software, in Notes on Haskell
• Rewrites Considered Harmful? by Neil Gunton
• Chad Fowler. "The Big Rewrite". Archived from the original on 2016-12-08.