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From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Second System Effect
Summary: implementation technique
Message-ID: <1991Feb26.002406.4681@ico.isc.com>
Date: 26 Feb 91 00:24:06 GMT
References: <30512@mimsy.umd.edu> <448@data.UUCP> <30619@mimsy.umd.edu>
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 26

dalamb@avi.umiacs.umd.edu (David Lamb) writes:
> Earlier, I wrote:
> >Do y'all believe [second system effect is] still a problem these days?

> In an effort to be brief, I think I stated my question unclearly.
...[comparing SSE to feeping creaturism]
> ...But I think the Second System Effect (SSE) may be
> different; Brooks was talking about designing a new (second) system,
> not evolving an existing one...

Lamb's points are good ones--in a sense there really is a difference
between CF and SSE.  But an alternative view is that creeping featurism
is just an "implementation technique" used to produce the second-system
effect (the final result, anyway:-) incrementally!  But CF can be more
dangerous because it's seductive--"Well, we just need this one little
feature now."  Each step you take seems to make sense...so, unlike SSE
where the whole thing can collapse in the design phase and (fortunately!)
prevent you from ever shipping a product, CF allows you to proceed through
to creating a software Frankenstein's monster which is not only un-main-
tainable but unkillable.  Beyond that, the "failure" is very diffuse, in
the sense that the activity which produces the monster is spread out over a
long time and a lot of features.  You can't point to "the one that made it
fail."
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...But is it art?


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