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Second-system effect

#Software Engineering

The second-system effect or second-system syndrome is the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to be succeeded by over-engineeredbloated systems, due to inflated expectations and overconfidence.

The phrase was first used by [[Fred Brooks]] in his book [[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, which happened in 1964.


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