second-system effect

(sometimes, more euphoniously, second-system syndrome) When one is designing the successor to a relatively small, elegant, and successful system, there is a tendency to become grandiose in one's success and design an {elephantine} feature-laden monstrosity. The term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering (Addison-Wesley, 1975; ISBN 0-201-00650-2). It described the jump from a set of nice, simple operating systems on the IBM 70xx series to OS/360 on the 360 series. A similar effect can also happen in an evolving system; see {Brooks's Law}, {creeping elegance}, {creeping featurism}. See also {Multics}, {OS/2}, {X}, {software bloat}.

This version of the jargon lexicon has been described (with altogether too much truth for comfort) as an example of second-system effect run amok on jargon-1....

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