are top-level variables outside of a class referred to as "properties"?

I don’t think so, since properties are related to a class: they presume implicit accessors, which don’t exist for top level declarations. They’re just variables or constants, global or not depending on their visibility

but they have a generated getter/setter

I assumed so

Oh wow… didn’t know that, thanks!

I did test whether top-level properties were allowed last week while preparing presentation, I was interested whether one can expect/actual properties (spoiler, you can)

thank you very much

@Matteo Mirk They end up being class properties in the bytecode because there's no choice, and as per above, they add getter/setter for convenient/idiomatic access in Java.

You can also override get/set like for class properties. Is that something that is used in real code?

Yeah, now that Marko pointed it out I know. Makes sense: translating to Java you have no other choice other than making those static members of a top-level class. Thanks for the clarification.

top-level properties can never be declared without initialization, unless they're nullable or use lateinit/lazy, right?