Second-system effect

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

The second-system effect (also known as second-system syndrome) refers to the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to have elephantine, feature-laden monstrosities as their successors.

The term was first used by Fred Brooks in his classic The Mythical Man-Month.[1] It described the jump from a set of simple operating systems on the IBM 700/7000 series to OS/360 on the 360 series.

Contents

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. (December 2006) [1975]. "The Second-System Effect". The Mythical Man-Month: essays on software engineering (Anniversary ed. ed.). Addison Wesley Longman. p. 53. ISBN 0-201-83595-9. 

References[edit]

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.

External links[edit]