Second-system effect

Second-system effect

In computing, the second-system effect or sometimes the second-system syndrome refers to the tendency to design the successor to a relatively small, elegant, and successful system as an elephantine, feature-laden monstrosity. The term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic "The Mythical Man-Month". It described the jump from a set of simple operating systems on the IBM 700/7000 series to OS/360 on the 360 series.

Explanation

Although expressed as a problem of software design, the second-system effect is observable throughout all human design effort. It is somewhat akin to the idea of "fighting the last [previous] battle".

People who have designed something only once before try to do all the things they "didn't get to do last time", loading the project up with all the things they put off while making version one, even if most of them should be put off in version two as well.

ee also

* Unix philosophy
* Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment
* OS/2
* Software bloat
* Inner-platform effect
* Sophomore slump

External links

* [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html Things You Should Never Do] by Joel Spolsky, about the Netscape project.
* [http://notes-on-haskell.blogspot.com/2007/08/rewriting-software.html Rewriting Software] , in Notes on Haskell.
* [http://www.neilgunton.com/doc/rewrites_harmful Rewrites Considered Harmful?] by Neil Gunton


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