bedrocksuch

Bedrocksuch is a neologism used in discussions of software architecture and systems engineering to describe a design philosophy that treats a small set of core, stable components as the bedrock of a system. The idea is that by restricting changes to these foundations and by maintaining explicit, versioned interfaces among them, a system becomes easier to evolve, test, and recover from failures. Typical practice includes defining a limited set of core modules that encapsulate essential domain logic, establishing contracts that are versioned and backwards-compatible, applying disciplined data immutability or controlled mutation to critical stores, designing idempotent operations, and ensuring comprehensive observability across layers.

Origin and usage: The term is not tied to a single organization. It surfaces in technology blogs, engineering talks, and some discipline-specific handbooks as a conceptual framework rather than a formal methodology. In practice, bedrocksuch informs API design, data layer boundaries, and deployment strategies that minimize ripple effects when changes are made.

Criticism: Critics argue that bedrocksuch can be ill-defined or tautological, urging practitioners to specify measurable criteria and concrete practices rather than rely on the metaphor.

See also: bedrock, software architecture, resilience, fault tolerance.