An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He
knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with
great restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and
embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away
to be used "next time". Sooner or later the first system is finished,
and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of
that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
are particular and not generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
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....
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....
