In physics, the minimum amount of
fissionable material required to sustain a chain reaction. Of a
software product, describes a condition of the software such that
fixing one bug introduces one plus epsilon bugs. (This malady
has many causes: creeping featurism, ports to too many
disparate environments, poor initial design, etc.) When software
achieves critical mass, it can never be fixed; it can only be
discarded and rewritten.
econd-system effect: n. (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....
