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What Is a Property?

https://alperenkeles.com/posts/what-is-a-property/
34•alpaylan•4d ago

Comments

happytoexplain•1h ago
Maybe I have a bit of a brain problem, but for me, 90% of the effort that goes into learning anything in tech is spent on identifying which nouns are Nouns, and which are just nouns, and the (often mushy) semantics of how people use those nouns in varying contexts and sub-contexts. I understand the reasons for this complexity - domain-specific terminology is valuable and forms naturally from pre-existing words. It's just that, in tech, everything is abstract, and everything consists of multiple contexts spread across multiple dimensions (vertically, in abstraction layers; horizontally, in use cases), so the domain-specific terminology explodes like an exponential web. Sometimes I'm talking to somebody and they are using some word, and it takes me days to even realize that they are using it in a much more specific context than I assumed. It's a little hellish.
troupo•1h ago
It doesn't help that many texts approach this as a very pseudo-mathematics abstract. It's not a function, it's an implication. It's there are satisfactions of preconditions, there's a thousand different things.

Unfortunately, very few texts and tutorials on property-based testing actually tell you how to see what properties are. I have it on paper somewhere in some workshop materials. But online I think this is one of the very few that describe what they are: https://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/property-based-testi...

alpaylan•56m ago
I agree. It’s especially weird moving across related domains because suddenly something you think you know has changed meaning. For instance eBPF is “verified”, but the verification is almost completely unrelated from the usual connotations.
wizardforhire•32m ago
This is literally the difficulties with learning any discipline!
AlienRobot•18m ago
The worst thing is being corrected about minutiae. It's not a "property" it's an attribute/field/member/key/column/variable/getter/function/procedure. Deep down it's all variables. Even the constants are variables from the viewpoint of the CPU that has to load it in its registers.

Sometimes I see people saying "in LANG, obj.foo is just 'syntax sugar' for foo(obj)" and I think that technically it has always been "syntax sugar" and there have always been ways to call any "method" with any "object" of any "type."

Sometime along the way we decided that "syntax sugar" means "it means the same thing as" but except for (<cast OtherType>obj).foo(), which means that the semantics of "syntax sugar" don't mean it's simpler than the phrase it was supposed to replace.

analog31•13m ago
I'm reminded of the story of Richard Feynman and the names of birds:

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/85809/feynman...

Small models also found the vulnerabilities that Mythos found

https://aisle.com/blog/ai-cybersecurity-after-mythos-the-jagged-frontier
667•dominicq•5h ago•182 comments

Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit (2023)

https://khronokernel.com/macos/2023/08/08/AS-VM.html
82•krackers•1h ago•21 comments

447 TB/cm² at zero retention energy – atomic-scale memory on fluorographane

https://zenodo.org/records/19513269
78•iliatoli•2h ago•33 comments

How We Broke Top AI Agent Benchmarks: And What Comes Next

https://rdi.berkeley.edu/blog/trustworthy-benchmarks-cont/
136•Anon84•3h ago•41 comments

Dark Castle

https://darkcastle.co.uk/
64•evo_9•2h ago•5 comments

Pijul a FOSS distributed version control system

https://pijul.org/
30•kouosi•4d ago•3 comments

How to build a `Git diff` driver

https://www.jvt.me/posts/2026/04/11/how-git-diff-driver/
56•zdw•4h ago•3 comments

Advanced Mac Substitute is an API-level reimplementation of 1980s-era Mac OS

https://www.v68k.org/advanced-mac-substitute/
164•zdw•7h ago•45 comments

Cirrus Labs to join OpenAI

https://cirruslabs.org/
216•seekdeep•9h ago•109 comments

What Is a Property?

https://alperenkeles.com/posts/what-is-a-property/
34•alpaylan•4d ago•6 comments

Surelock: Deadlock-Free Mutexes for Rust

https://notes.brooklynzelenka.com/Blog/Surelock
144•codetheweb•3d ago•47 comments

Keeping a Postgres Queue Healthy

https://planetscale.com/blog/keeping-a-postgres-queue-healthy
65•tanelpoder•6h ago•18 comments

Show HN: Pardonned.com – A searchable database of US Pardons

332•vidluther•16h ago•164 comments

Metrics SQL: A SQL-based semantic layer for humans and agents

https://www.rilldata.com/blog/introducing-metrics-sql-a-sql-based-semantic-layer-for-humans-and-a...
4•sebg•2d ago•0 comments

The APL programming language source code (2012)

https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-apl-programming-language-source-code/
31•tosh•5h ago•3 comments

Starfling: A one-tap endless orbital slingshot game in a single HTML file

https://playstarfling.com
531•iceberger2001•2d ago•133 comments

Every plane you see in the sky – you can now follow it from the cockpit in 3D

https://flight-viz.com/cockpit.html?lat=40.64&lon=-73.78&alt=3000&hdg=220&spd=130&cs=DAL123
183•coolwulf•3d ago•40 comments

The Problem That Built an Industry

https://ajitem.com/blog/iron-core-part-1-the-problem-that-built-an-industry/
91•ShaggyHotDog•8h ago•34 comments

Optimal Strategy for Connect 4

https://2swap.github.io/WeakC4/explanation/
239•marvinborner•3d ago•30 comments

Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

https://apnews.com/article/aadam-jacobs-collection-concerts-internet-archive-chicago-b1c9c4466a2d...
322•geox•3d ago•63 comments

Phone Trips

http://www.wideweb.com/phonetrips/
53•bookofjoe•6h ago•4 comments

The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

https://aphyr.com/posts/415-the-future-of-everything-is-lies-i-guess-annoyances
190•aphyr•8h ago•115 comments

South Korea introduces universal basic mobile data access

https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/10/south_korea_data_access_universal/
277•saikatsg•9h ago•77 comments

New synthesis of astronomical measurements shows Hubble tension is real

https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2611/
12•anigbrowl•3h ago•0 comments

Installing every* Firefox extension

https://jack.cab/blog/every-firefox-extension
623•RohanAdwankar•1d ago•75 comments

Filing the corners off my MacBooks

https://kentwalters.com/posts/corners/
1281•normanvalentine•1d ago•596 comments

Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr71lkzv49po
414•neversaydie•1d ago•249 comments

Artemis II safely splashes down

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/artemis-ii-splashdown-return/
1213•areoform•22h ago•387 comments

Previously unknown verses by Empedocles found on papyrus

https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/75792
56•danielam•2d ago•13 comments

How much linear memory access is enough?

https://solidean.com/blog/2026/how-much-linear-memory-access-is-enough/
64•PhilipTrettner•3d ago•10 comments