pessimism
n.n. the belief that things will not go well in the future. In computing, it describes a system that assumes the worst will happen and prepares for it.
n. the tendency to expect the worst possible outcome. In a technical context, it refers to a design philosophy where systems are built to handle the most severe failure scenarios.
The system uses pessimism to prevent data loss.
By adopting a pessimism approach, the software ensures that even if one server fails, the network remains fully operational.
The architect argued that a pessimism strategy was essential for the cloud infrastructure, as it accounted for potential hardware failures and network latency without requiring constant manual intervention.
From French pessimisme, from Latin pessimus (“worst”) + -ism, superlative of malus (“bad”). As a doctrine, from German Pessimismus as used by the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in 1819.