The Matthew effect widely exists in natural and artificial systems. This paper studies the Matthew effect
emerging from large information systems by investigating their topological complexity. The Matthew
effect of the topological complexity reveals scale-free behavior that can be characterized by the general
scale-free model [Physics Letters A 303 (2002) 337–344]. The poor–rich demarcation of the Matthew
effect is analyzed to classify modules of information systems based on ABC analysis that is consistent
with the ABC classification of human resources. Thus the Matthew effectis applied to envisage the critical
fusion of high performance and low costin software engineering. Finally,theMatthew ef