The second-system effect or second-system syndrome is the tendency of small,
elegant, and successful systems to be succeeded by
over-engineered,
bloated
Abdominal bloating (or simply bloating) is a short-term disease that affects the gastrointestinal tract. Bloating is generally characterized by an excess buildup of gas, air or fluids in the stomach. A person may have feelings of tightness, pressu ...
systems, due to inflated expectations and overconfidence.
The phrase was first used by
Fred Brooks
Frederick Phillips Brooks Jr. (April 19, 1931 – November 17, 2022) was an American computer architect, software engineer, and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of IBM's System/360 family of computers and the ...
in his book ''
The Mythical Man-Month
''The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering'' is a book on software engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Its central theme is that adding manpower to a ...
'', first published in 1975. It described the jump from a set of simple operating systems on the
IBM 700/7000 series to
OS/360
OS/360, officially known as IBM System/360 Operating System, is a discontinued batch processing operating system developed by IBM for their then-new System/360 mainframe computer, announced in 1964; it was influenced by the earlier IBSYS/IBJOB ...
on the 360 series, which happened in 1964.
See also
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Anti-pattern
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Feature creep
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Inner-platform effect
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Osborne effect
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Sophomore slump
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Unix philosophy
The Unix philosophy, originated by Ken Thompson, is a set of cultural norms and philosophical approaches to minimalist, modular software development. It is based on the experience of leading developers of the Unix operating system. Early Unix d ...
References
External links
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Anti-patterns
Software quality
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