Terminology History Features – Origin of the Term Feature Creep

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There is a decent Wikipedia article on the "Feature Creep", but it doesn't state an origin. A Google search only leads to some vague article claiming "Earl Rich" coined the term, but there isn't much backup for that claim. There is a Dilbert comic from 2001 on the subject, but the tone seems to imply that the term pre-existed; more or less confirmed by the fact that Google has results pre-2000. However, finding the exact origin proofs difficult.

So, who, if anyone at all, coined the term "Feature Creep"? Where does it come from?

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The etymologic history of computer jargon is well documented in the Jargon file (current version as of this writing is 4.4.8).

The specific term "Feature Creep" is listed as "New in 4.1.0" in the change log. 4.1.0 dates to March 12, 1999 and is defined as:

feature creep: n. The result of {creeping featurism}, as in "Emacs has a bad case of feature creep".

While this is the earliest use of the word in specific context, there are indications that the phrase existed earlier in some form.

The begining of each jargon file has a section on the various non-word aspects of the use of language by computer types.

In an early version of the Jargon file from 1981:

Soundalike slang: similar to Cockney rhyming slang.  Often made up on
   the spur of the moment.  Standard examples:
    Boston Globe => Boston Glob
    Herald American => Horrid (Harried) American
    New York Times => New York Slime
    historical reasons => hysterical raisins
    government property - do not duplicate (seen on keys)
        => government duplicity - do not propagate
   Often the substitution will be made in such a way as to slip in
   a standard jargon word:
    Dr. Dobb's Journal => Dr. Frob's Journal
    creeping featurism => feeping creaturism
    Margaret Jacks Hall => Marginal Hacks Hall

The "creeping featurism" entry suggests that the term may have been used, if not in that exact form of "feature creep".

Thus, language the term existed for certain in 1999 in the hacker (realize that the term "hacker" in the jargon file is a different group than it is today) community.

Indications that the phrase existed, though didn't formally enter the lexicon show up as early as 1981 and may have been common usage in the MIT and Stanford communities.

The concept of "feature creep" can be documented in 1975 as part of the Mythical Man Month. In one of the essays within this collection, "Second System Effect" is described. From the Wikipedia summary:

The second-system effect proposes that, when an architect designs a second system, it is the most dangerous system he will ever design, because he will tend to incorporate all of the additions he originated but did not add (due to inherent time constraints) to the first system. Thus, when embarking upon a second system, an engineer should be mindful that he is susceptible to over-engineering it.

Realize the difference between the Mythical Man Month and the Jargon file likely represents two different cultures - the Mythical Man Month is from a project management perspective while the jargon file is more from the hacker/academic perspective.

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Origin of the Term ‘Red/Black Tree’

EDIT: Answer from Professor Guibas:

from Leonidas Guibas guibas@cs.stanford.edu to of the "Red-Black" term mailed-by cs.stanford.edu hide details 16:16 (0 minutes ago)

we had red and black pens for drawing the trees.

I believe the term first appeared in "A dichromatic framework for balanced trees" from Leonidas J. Guibas and Robert Sedgewick in 1978.

Where did the notion of “one return only” come from

"Single Entry, Single Exit" was written when most programming was done in assembly language, FORTRAN, or COBOL. It has been widely misinterpreted, because modern languages do not support the practices Dijkstra was warning against.

"Single Entry" meant "do not create alternate entry points for functions". In assembly language, of course, it is possible to enter a function at any instruction. FORTRAN supported multiple entries to functions with the ENTRY statement:

      SUBROUTINE S(X, Y)
      R = SQRT(X*X + Y*Y)
C ALTERNATE ENTRY USED WHEN R IS ALREADY KNOWN
      ENTRY S2(R)
      ...
      RETURN
      END

C USAGE
      CALL S(3,4)
C ALTERNATE USAGE
      CALL S2(5)

"Single Exit" meant that a function should only return to one place: the statement immediately following the call. It did not mean that a function should only return from one place. When Structured Programming was written, it was common practice for a function to indicate an error by returning to an alternate location. FORTRAN supported this via "alternate return":

C SUBROUTINE WITH ALTERNATE RETURN.  THE '*' IS A PLACE HOLDER FOR THE ERROR RETURN
      SUBROUTINE QSOLVE(A, B, C, X1, X2, *)
      DISCR = B*B - 4*A*C
C NO SOLUTIONS, RETURN TO ERROR HANDLING LOCATION
      IF DISCR .LT. 0 RETURN 1
      SD = SQRT(DISCR)
      DENOM = 2*A
      X1 = (-B + SD) / DENOM
      X2 = (-B - SD) / DENOM
      RETURN
      END

C USE OF ALTERNATE RETURN
      CALL QSOLVE(1, 0, 1, X1, X2, *99)
C SOLUTION FOUND
      ...
C QSOLVE RETURNS HERE IF NO SOLUTIONS
99    PRINT 'NO SOLUTIONS'

Both these techniques were highly error prone. Use of alternate entries often left some variable uninitialized. Use of alternate returns had all the problems of a GOTO statement, with the additional complication that the branch condition was not adjacent to the branch, but somewhere in the subroutine.

Thanks to Alexey Romanov for finding the original paper. See http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD249.PDF, page 28 (printed page number is 24). Not limited to functions.

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Related Solutions

Origin of the Term ‘Red/Black Tree’

Where did the notion of “one return only” come from

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