"The term "creeping featurism" was used in a 1976 Programmer's Workbench paper written by John Mashey, and in a talk by him first done in 1977, and later gave (as an ACM National Lecture) about 50-70 times through 1982. The original foils were scanned in 2002, and the phrase is used on Slide 033 within the talk. Mashey says "I can't recall if I actually coined this myself or heard it somewhere, but in any case, the phrase was certainly in public use by 1976.""