the second-system effect

expression

programmingops culture

Fred Brooks's warning that the successor to a successful system tends to be overengineered with every idea saved up from the first.

The first system was kept humble by ignorance; the second gets all the features its designers wished for, and sinks under them. Protocols, products, and rewrites all fall for it - restraint is a second-system skill.

Also known as: second system syndrome

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