The Code Golf FAQ says, "You should only ask practical, answerable questions". "Answerable" I get, but isn't code golf by its nature impractical, but fun? Aside from the impracticality of minimizing source code length, many of the puzzles that one can solve when golfing don't have practical applications. Are they off limits?
I wonder whether the "practical" blurb is Stack Exchange boilerplate text that accidentally got copied over.
You can learn a lot about a languages features by the very act of golfing. I feel that knowledge for knowledges' sake is actually beautiful just as Mathematics is. I don't think code that has no practical applications should be off limits. The sheer challenge alone is an art form to be admired.
That depends. Code golf questions usually tend to not require a huge amount of mathematical (or chemical, biological etc.) knowledge and therefore code golf is usually not about solving real world problems. Code golf is trickery. That's all it is, and that's the way it's supposed to be. It's like solving sudoku puzzle. It's hard, it's fun, it helps a little for real world stuff, but it's more hacking than solving.
