[HN Gopher] Hegel, a universal property-based testing protocol a...
___________________________________________________________________
Hegel, a universal property-based testing protocol and family of
PBT libraries
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 66 points
Date : 2026-04-09 18:37 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hegel.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (hegel.dev)
| aerhardt wrote:
| Off-topic but only today I was thinking of Hegel-related names
| for a certain business idea. Was wondering who had registered all
| the domains, well here's one. It would a completely different
| domain, and also a derivation of the name, so nothing to worry
| about there. But if I build something in Rust, I'll remember you
| :)
| aw1621107 wrote:
| A bit of an intro/announcement blog post for Hegel ("Hypothesis,
| Antithesis, synthesis", [0]) was submitted here ~2 weeks ago [1]
| and got a fair bit of discussion (106 comments).
|
| [0]: https://antithesis.com/blog/2026/hegel/
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504094
| mykowebhn wrote:
| Oh god, as someone who studies and admires Hegel, please change
| the name from Hegel.
| supliminal wrote:
| A Hegel just flew over your house.
| tensegrist wrote:
| does anyone actually say it like that
| aerhardt wrote:
| Why? It's perfectly coherent with the group of libraries and
| what they do.
| bwestergard wrote:
| It isn't. See: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708045
| aerhardt wrote:
| I've read primary text excerpts from Hegel and some
| secondary sources too, and already knew that he didn't
| write in that style, but the general idea that many forces
| in life develop themselves dialectically (the antithesis
| sometimes being expressed as alienation) is very similar in
| concept.
|
| That a myth has developed around the terminology and
| methodology is persuading, but also there's nothing wrong
| with a programming library to call itself Hegel.
|
| Interesting paper regardless thanks for sharing.
| sigbottle wrote:
| Yo what has been the coolest thing about Hegel's philosophy you
| learned?
| mykowebhn wrote:
| (I can really only do your question a modicum of justice by
| answering metaphorically.) That Anglo-American analytic
| philosophy, which has dominated much of 20th century Western
| philosophy and Western thought, was doomed from the start. It
| treated ontological Being as fixed, as beings nailed to a
| wall, lifeless and immobile. Hegelian philosophy, more than
| anything, is about movement.
| henry_bone wrote:
| On the other hand, I have quite the visceral reaction to the
| name because of the influence Hegel had on Marx, and subsequent
| 20th century critical theorists.
| amoe_ wrote:
| Completely agree. It's absolutely awful having software
| projects squatting on the names of great philosophers and
| artists. I appreciate that perhaps the author wanted to show
| their appreciation, but there are plenty of other equally
| communicative options.
| triplechill wrote:
| Awesome! I've been waiting for hegel-go and can't wait to take it
| for a spin
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| I'm studying currently Phenomenology of Geist. No code is so gard
| to read as it.
| efficax wrote:
| Just wait until you get into the Science of Logic
| sigbottle wrote:
| I'm starting with the Science of Logic!
|
| I want to cry...
| mykowebhn wrote:
| The first part of his Encyclopedia will help a lot, and
| might be better to read first before diving into SoL.
| mykowebhn wrote:
| Did you start with the Preface, or are you going to read it at
| the end?
|
| (I strongly recommend the latter.)
| tybug wrote:
| I didn't expect to see Hegel when opening up HN today! Feel free
| to ask any questions about it. We released hegel-go earlier this
| week, and plan to release hegel-cpp sometime next week, so look
| forward to that :)
| samth wrote:
| Is the protocol documented so that other people can build
| language front-ends?
| tybug wrote:
| Yes! I just wrote up documentation for the protocol earlier
| this week: https://hegel.dev/reference/protocol.
|
| In reality, we hope to provide more guidance than this to
| people who want to write their own language frontend. This
| protocol reference doesn't talk about the realities of
| [hegel-core](https://github.com/hegeldev/hegel-core) and how
| to invoke it, for example.
|
| We intend to write a "How to write your own Hegel library"
| how-to guide. You can subscribe to this issue to get notified
| when we write that:
| https://github.com/hegeldev/website/issues/3.
|
| If you're eager, pointing your favorite LLM at
| https://hegel.dev/reference/protocol +
| https://github.com/hegeldev/hegel-rust and asking it to write
| you one for your language of choice should be enough to get
| you started!
| antoinebalaine wrote:
| How exciting! I wrote my own pbt lib for zig
| (https://github.com/AntoineBalaine/zlowcheck) and it made me
| sad I couldn't get it nearly close to hypothesis. Looking
| forward to see this grow! Any hope for ffi through the c abi?
| utdemir wrote:
| PSA: On the surface it looks great - but it's something that
| spawns a Python server (with uv - I think) and does communicate
| with it during tests. I don't think it's complexity we need to
| take on on our unit tests.
|
| A saner approach would be to start with a FFI-friendly language
| and create bindings. I don't think just being able to use an
| already written framework in Python is worth the trade-off.
| aw1621107 wrote:
| > A saner approach would be to start with a FFI-friendly
| language and create bindings. I don't think just being able to
| use an already written framework in Python is worth the trade-
| off.
|
| For what it's worth the devs say their "current long-term plan
| is to implement a second Hegel server in Rust" [0], so the
| current state of affairs is probably a compromise between
| getting something usable for end users out and something more
| "sane", as you put it.
|
| [0]:
| https://antithesis.com/blog/2026/hegel/#what%E2%80%99s-next
| MoonWalk wrote:
| Now that's how you write a title.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| In the era of AI codegen, I think property-based testing will and
| should see greater uptake. Unit tests are too brittle for the
| grind on it till it works methods of agentic written code.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-09 23:00 UTC)