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Maybe I'm overgeneralizing, but it seems to me like if we make [language-agnostic] a tag, we're going to have an awful lot of questions with it. I'm pretty sure every golf I've seen so far, on here and SO, was attempted in more than one language. And so far, it sounds like a very large percentage of questions here will be golfs.

So, is this an appropriate tag?

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    \$\begingroup\$ perhaps we should have [language-specific] :) really I think there are not many reasons to have language specific questions. There have been a few "golfing tips for xxx" etc. which I feel should be CW \$\endgroup\$
    – gnibbler
    Feb 2, 2011 at 9:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ @gnibbler: That's not a bad idea, and that might be more useful. \$\endgroup\$
    – Andy
    Feb 2, 2011 at 15:43
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    \$\begingroup\$ @gnibbler, but wouldn't the actual language even better than language-specific? So I could follow C, Java, J, etc. questions? \$\endgroup\$
    – Paul Draper
    May 25, 2014 at 0:19

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To play devil's advocate:

I think ruby-golf and the like are good tags. But language-agnostic is bad because it's implied by the lack of x-golf tags and "in language X" in the question. It has no use.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ +1. I agree with the language specific tag. \$\endgroup\$
    – cbrulak
    Feb 3, 2011 at 23:31
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The situation on SO was driven in part by a community decision that code-golf was to be agnostic (i.e. we weren't having it if it wasn't). I don't believe that that is going to be the case here.

My take: banning amounts to a claim that all puzzles are open to all languages by default and the asker must specify to restrict it. And I'm OK with that, but if that is our intent lets be clear about it.

Otherwise should stay.

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I think language agnostic is a great tag for asking for help with specific challenges such as Project Euler. As Nakilon says in Are Questions from... It is a great opportunity to discuss programming techniques using generic pseudo code without discussing a specific and full solutions.

Marcog suggested using language specific tags such as ruby-golf, perl-golf, etc for the question: What should be the rules.... If we go with Marcog's suggestion I think language-agnostic could also be used to indicate a question open to all languages.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ In that case, [language-agnostic] doesn't sound that bad, as long as people don't use it on every golf not intended for a specific language (i.e. most of them). What I was concerned about is that people would (and I think some are already), and if that's the case, that tag wouldn't help narrow a search very much. \$\endgroup\$
    – Andy
    Feb 2, 2011 at 15:46
  • \$\begingroup\$ I agree, one shouldn't have to search all questions not tagged with x-golf to find language agnostic questions. This tag does a good job of creating a category, which is the main (only?) function of a tag. That said, my answer points out the downsides just for fun. \$\endgroup\$
    – Matthew Read
    Feb 3, 2011 at 21:56
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I was going to ask this myself, but I see that I was beaten to it. IMO, makes sense on sites like SO or codereview.SE where it's the exception, or at least not the overwhelming rule.

However, most challenges here seem to be open to all languages, and the few that aren't can be (and generally are) tagged accordingly. Thus, serves only to clutter the tag list.

(A particular reason why is problematic is that, because it's used so much, it's sometimes picked as the page title prefix over more relevant tags, as in this question.)

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language-agnostic is not a good tag. If it is a true code golf then it will be a language specific solution.

However, if it is not a code golf, like Project Euler, it is about algorithms and should be tagged accordingly.

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    \$\begingroup\$ We golfed across languages all the time on SO. \$\endgroup\$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Feb 3, 2011 at 23:11
  • \$\begingroup\$ fine. but this is a bit different because we're goign to see ppl 'discuss' how one lang is going to win over another due to the specifics of the language. hence when the tag is useless. I agree with Mathew Read. \$\endgroup\$
    – cbrulak
    Feb 3, 2011 at 23:30

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