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. 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.
[Jargon File]
Nearby terms:
second level cache « second normal form «
Second-Order Lambda-calculus « second-system
effect » sector interleave » sector interleaving
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