Let's create some new types of challenges!

Question

Our site needs unique content. The more different and new a question is, the more interesting it will probably be. Therefore, let's propose new genres of challenges!

What exactly is a challenge genre? It's one of these. The most commonly used ones are code-golf, code-challenge, and popularity-contest. Let's create some new ones! Here are some guidelines to follow in these challenge genres:

• Make it non-opinion-based. popularity-contest is nice, but it's kind of stretching it. Given a list of all of the submissions, you should be able to objectively choose which answer is the winner.
• Don't be boring. This should go without saying, but a code-golf-using-fractions genre would not be unique and interesting enough.
• Try to attract quality over quantity. One of the main reasons that I'm against code-trolling is that it naturally attracts many mediocre answers, not a few high-quality ones.

To propose a genre, ask a question here on meta with the new-genre tag. Once a genre has reasonable support, it's time to post a question using that genre in the sandbox. Then, once that question is posted on the main site, the newly created tag can be used on a regular basis!

Answer 1

Code reuse

What about a type of challenge where you have two tasks, but your goal is to reuse for your second task as much code from the first task as possible? To avoid just blowing up with pointless code, the total length of the two programs should be taken into account as well. A possible (though probably not the best) metric could be the length of the first program plus the length of the unique part of the second program.

Answer 2

Fragile Keywords

Everything is falling apart! When you use a keyword or function, it breaks and you can't use it again.

Additional rule to make it more difficult to work around:

• Aliasing something counts as using it. Built-in aliases are fine, such as PHP's count() and sizeof(), but if you say #define v void, you can't use #define, v or void again.

This will make simple tasks slightly more challenging (for most standard languages):

• No more than 2 or 3 loops in your code: for and while, foreach if available
• No more than one function or class

Hard Mode

This could be a separate tag (fragile-keywords-hard) or just optional rules for the original tag to make it more challenging, such as:

• Types are fragile too; string, int, double, void etc.
• Numerical operators are fragile; +, *, -, / etc.
• Variables are fragile

Combining them is probably not recommended.

Answer 3

Take over the program!

I'm not sure how this would be implemented on a StackExchange site, but here's my idea:

• The asker provides a snippet of code.
• The asker provides two or more programs which could start with this snippet. That is to say, they give multiple tasks of similar difficulty.
• Each answerer selects one of the tasks.
• To compete, you post a snippet of code under a certain length limit.
• Upon receiving a vote score of +2, this snippet is added to the main program.
• Your mission is to ensure that the program fulfils the task that you have chosen. Competitors who select a different task will try to hijack the program to make it do their task.
• The winner is the person who puts in a code snippet that completes the program to match one of the possible tasks.

The question is carried out in a single language. (Though we could have multi-language polyglot variants - for example, a program in C++ could do something different from the same source code in Brainfuck. But that's just a random idea.)

Restrictions

• No comments in source code. (Otherwise, you could comment out an opponent's code)
• Two supporters of the same task cannot post consecutive answers. The second answer can be ignored.
• The program needn't fulfil that task only. The winner is the person to post an answer the addition of which makes the whole program valid code which carries out one of the tasks.
• No two snippets may be identical.
• Additional restrictions will probably be needed

Answer 4

Feature Creep

This is a proposed better way to implement multi-feature challenges that often have a ridiculously intricate set of minus-bytes bonuses that, in the end, just end up favoring the terser languages anyway.

Instead, the premise of the tag is simply:

Whoever implements the most features enumerated in the spec is the winner

I am thinking of doing my Human Genome challenge as a test case for this, to see how it goes.

My thinking is to have shortest code as the tiebreaker for these challenges, but also that ideally they should clearly define enough features that ties will be unlikely.

Answer 5

Data Golf

Instead of explicitly providing code, the winner of a Data Golf contest is the participant that can express the data specified in the puzzle using the least amount of space. Because data compression/storage size is often relative to the contents of the data itself, scores would be in the form of best case/average case/worst case bytes per example input, and the asker can choose which case (or combination) is to be used for ranking.

If the asker includes specific input data examples, it would be advisable (or can be required by the asker) for the participant to use their storage algorithm to on the examples and post the formatted data and length for each. Simply running data through an off-the-shelf compressor (gzip, bzip2, DEFLATE, et cetera) would be implicitly disallowed in all questions.

Participants can choose to include sample code along with the algorithm, but that would be optional unless the asker expressly requires it in the question.

An example of a popular question that fits into this format is GeekWithALife's Smallest chess board compression puzzle.

Answer 6

Inspired by

I'm still waiting for someone to say, "I just started working at this company and took over work on this existing application, and it's really cleanly coded, easy to understand, and a breeze to make changes to." I don't think such a thing exists. – Scott Whitlock Jun 12 '12 at 12:15

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Programming Puzzles and Code Golf is notorious for having challenges with ugly (for real uses) code. Why not create a challenge that's the opposite?

Clean Code

The asker provides a problem to solve, such as writing an interpreter for some language, and a style guide. The winner is the answer which best fits the style guide.

Problems:

• Requires a previously written style guide, or elaborate writing on part of the asker.
• How can we judge between two answers that both completely fit the style guide?
• How can we judge how well an answer fits the style guide?
• What about multiple languages?

Answer 7

This is sure to conflict with some of the veteran users here, but I need to say this, and it wouldn't fit in a comment.

Problem 1

The introduction of tags is something that has already been standardized across Stack Exchange. It is a privilege granted to users with sufficient reputation. This proposed sandbox flies in the face of such a privilege. The reasoning behind such a feature being implemented is due to an elitist attitude of "we are different than other sites".

We are different, but it doesn't apply to everything.

This proposed sandbox will allow brand new users to suggest new tags and discourage high rep users from creating new tags.

Problem 2

Someone now has to maintain not one, but TWO sandboxes. If the site becomes popular, both sandboxes will potentially break due to having too many answers per sandbox and not enough people willing to actually review all of them. This breaks Stack Exchange's "crowd-source" style of moderation. Questions are moderated at the time of being posted, and errors are fixed. Users here have an elitist attitude that questions must be near-perfect at post-time or be closed immediately.

You might ask - Why do I think there will not be enough users to review all of the sandbox posts on a high-usage site? We have no problem with it now! The answer is simple. No reputation is gained from perusing sandbox posts. It only works now because a select few religiously check it, some subscribe to it, and others clamor for attention in the chat. Also, we currently only have to create a new sandbox every few days (or weeks). That will change on a high-usage site.

The overhead of posting near-perfect questions is not worth the benefits gained. Crowd-sourced moderation breaks unless everyone begins reviewing the sandbox. We have no way to reward users for reviewing the sandbox, and so it will break. In fact, I have already seen questions go multiple sandboxes without very little attention. It's already breaking!

Conclusion

Lose the "We are different in every way" attitude. We are different because we ask questions about topics that we may not have actually faced, and we use scoring mechanisms that we created. In all other areas, apply the "We are different" or "This doesn't apply to us" labels with caution.

Answer 8

Golfing/Bowling with Sandbags

After golfing to the max, one must then add extra operations to pad the count out to a specified factor, like 10. Say your count was 98. Rather than suffer a massive penalty, you must add -- somewhere to double-flip an integer, rounding out the count to 100, a multiple of 10. Adding space or comments wouldn't count.

Not quite sure how to apply this to bowling, but I have an (unconfirmed) intuition that it's possible.

Answer 9

Unspoiled Puzzles

For challenges in understanding obscure code as exhibited by the classic C Puzzle Book, what about a modification of the framework which conceals other answers until you submit an answer (or a correct answer). This might require further deviations of the site format, since voting wouldn't really make sense; it should be replaced by multiple accepted answers.

The draw for answerers would be: if you solve the puzzle, you get +15 without any need to pander for votes.

Answer 10

Multi-Language

Questions are posed like standard code-golf or popularity-contest questions, but the answers must be written in at least two (possibly more, if specified in the question) languages.

The answers must also be executed using multiple languages per-execution, but does not have to be contained in a single source file. Languages cannot be used only to execute other languages.

In code-golf, answers are scored by taking the average of the lengths of the two language sources and adding the average difference between the sources. (rounded up)

Example:

Note that the second answer is disqualified, as Batch simply executes a python file

Question:

Print Hello, world. I am banana! with as low a score as possible, and using at least two languages.

Answer:

Python(0) + Batch(61) = 92 (30.5+61)

Batch

echo print('Hello, world. I am banana^!')>>"x.py"
python x.py

Answer:

Python(35) + Batch(11) = 47 (23+24)

Batch

python x.py

Python

print('Hello, world. I am banana!')

Answer 11

unexpected-golf

this tag is for questions asking to do a simple task in an unexpected, sophisticated and surprising way - so that if one would look at the code, he won't know what it does until he runs it. this tag already has lots of questions, but it doesn't has it's own tag, although it should have. vote for this in order for it to have a tag.

Answer 12

First Past The Post

To be used for challenges that are genuinely difficult, and/or require solving some kind of puzzle that only has one answer. The winner is simply the first person to post a correct solution.