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  "path": "/t/why-not-use-smallcheck/13860#post_19",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-02T23:26:40.000Z",
  "site": "https://discourse.haskell.org",
  "tags": [
    "The premise behind SmallCheck",
    "Hybrid algorithms",
    "18"
  ],
  "textContent": "The premise behind SmallCheck, namely, that\n\n> If a program fails to meet its specification in some cases, it almost always fails in some simple case.\n\nis false. There are many practical cases where a minimal counterexample is not that small or simple. Hybrid algorithms provide many examples.\n\nTo be concrete, imagine testing a hybrid sorting algorithm, which starts with divide-and-conquer quicksort, but switches to insertion sort once subarrays are less then N elements. On modern hardware typical values of N are `[15..20]` (say, it’s 18 in `vector-algorithms`). If you try to test it with SmallCheck you would never ever get into testing quicksort part of it, which could happily remain `undefined`, because enumerating all arrays up to 18 elements will take too long. But QuickCheck will get there fairly quickly.",
  "title": "Why not use smallcheck?"
}