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]