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second-system effect

   `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:
   Essays on Software Engineering" (Addison-Wesley, 1975; ISBN
   0-201-00650-2).  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.


   This version of the jargon lexicon has been described (with
   altogether too much truth for comfort) as an example of
   second-system effect run amok on jargon-1....