The second-system effect or second-system syndrome is the tendency of small,
elegant
Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity.
Elegance is frequently used as a standard of tastefulness, particularly in visual design, decorative arts, literature, science, and the aesthetics of mathematics.
Elegant t ...
, and successful systems to be succeeded by
over-engineered,
bloated 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 O ...
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
The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale (Mainframe computer, mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s ...
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
An anti-pattern in software engineering, project management, and business processes is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. The term, coined in 1995 by computer programmer An ...
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Feature creep
Feature creep is the excessive ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product, especially in computer software, video games and consumer and business electronics. These extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and ...
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Inner-platform effect
The inner-platform effect is the tendency of software architects to create a system so customizable as to become a replica, and often a poor replica, of the software development platform they are using. This is generally inefficient and such syste ...
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Osborne effect
The Osborne effect is a social phenomenon of customers canceling or deferring orders for the current, soon-to-be-obsolete product as an unexpected drawback of a company's announcing a future product prematurely. It is an example of cannibalizati ...
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Sophomore slump
A sophomore slump or sophomore jinx or sophomore jitters refers to an instance in which a second, or sophomore, effort fails to live up to the relatively high standards of the first effort.
It is commonly used to refer to the apathy of students ...
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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 de ...
References
External links
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Anti-patterns
Software quality
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