First Principle
Noun · Hacker Culture
Definitions
A foundational assumption or basic truth from which further reasoning can be built. In tech culture, talking from first principles usually means trying to strip away inherited assumptions and reason from more fundamental facts.
In plain English: A basic foundational truth or assumption used for reasoning.
Example: "The infrastructure debate got clearer once they argued from first principles about latency, failure domains, and operator burden instead of defending legacy habits by default."