(adj.) When used to describe
software or computer systems,
robust can describe one or more of several qualities:
- a system that does not break down easily or is not wholly affected by a single application failure
- a system that either recovers quickly from or holds up well under exceptional circumstances
- a system that is not wholly affected by a bug in one aspect of it
- a system that comes with a wide range of capabilities. (It should be noted that this last sense of the term robust is not uniformly accepted in technical circles. The term is typically used in this sense in the marketing of software or computer systems to emphasize a selling point and does not refer to the first three meanings of the term.)
