Second System Effect
March 20th, 2024 (7 months ago) • 1 minute
The second-system effect or second-system syndrome is the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to be succeeded by over-engineered, bloated systems, due to inflated expectations and overconfidence.
I always think that the code that I write now is bad and filled with bugs. I always think that I can do better with a rewrite of the entire things. But at the end, I ended up with with a complete new system with new bugs and new problems.
What I think would be a better way is to just ship a minimal viable product without caring about it being perfect for the first iteration. Then, instead of revamping it early on, just improve on it and fix bugs as your go. Of course, do it properly and not apply patches on patches.