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/  An architect's first work is apt to be \
| spare and clean. He                     |
|                                         |
| knows he doesn't know what he's doing,  |
| so he does it carefully and with great  |
| restraint.                              |
|                                         |
| As he designs the first work, frill     |
| after frill and embellishment after     |
| embellishment occur to him. These get   |
| stored away to be used "next time."     |
| Sooner or later the first system is     |
| finished, and the architect, with firm  |
| confidence and a demonstrated mastery   |
| of that class of systems, is ready to   |
| build a second system.                  |
|                                         |
| This second is the most dangerous       |
| system a man ever designs. When he does |
| his third and later ones, his prior     |
| experiences will confirm each other as  |
| to the general characteristics of such  |
| systems, and their differences will     |
| identify those parts of his experience  |
| that are particular and not             |
| generalizable.                          |
|                                         |
| 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, as Ovid says, is a "big pile."  |
|                                         |
| -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man  |
\ Month"                                  /
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