SECOND SYSTEM EFFECT!

I'm covered in software engineering books at the moment writing up
conference stuff and I happened to crack open a copy of "The Mythical
Man-Month" and felt I should remind everyone about the...

            --> *** SECOND   SYSTEM   EFFECT *** <--

which I'm sure we all know about but sometimes forget.

    "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 ... is a 'big pile'."
            -- Fred Brooks Jr, "The Mythical Man-Month" p 55

This isn't attached to any particular discussion going on at the
moment, I just thought it should be shouted loudly every once in a
while over the course of Perl 6's design to keep everyone on their
toes.  I'd recommend everyone who has a copy to just skim through
chapter 5 of MM-M once again.


PS Someone's going to argue that Perl 6 isn't a second system, its
the Nth system.  The exact value of N doesn't really matter, we're
still very much in danger of the second system effect.

-- 

Michael G. Schwern   <schwern@pobox.com>    http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
Perl6 Quality Assurance     <perl-qa@perl.org>	     Kwalitee Is Job One
How can I stoop so low?  Years of practise, that's how. It's been hard
going but now I can stoop lower than a pygmy limbo dancer.
	-- BOFH

• SECOND SYSTEM EFFECT! by Michael G Schwern
• Re: SECOND SYSTEM EFFECT! by Larry Wall
• Re: SECOND SYSTEM EFFECT! by Simon Cozens