I am thinking of hosting a king-of-the-hill, but I am reluctant to download all the languages people answer in. Similar to Survival Game - Create Your Wolf, I want to restrict languages. In that challenge, the language intended to be used was java, but ProgrammerDan created a wrapper for other languages. Rusher agreed to run those programs as well.
My problem with this solution is that it requires downloading the interpreter/compiler for every different language answered in. I'm reluctant to fill my computer with languages that I'll never use. There are several languages which I would accept because I already have interpreters/compilers for them:
- Java (My best language; I'd write my tester in it. I have Netbeans)
- C/C++ (I have Visual Studios Express 2013)
- C# (Same IDE works)
- Python 2 or 3
- Befunge 98 (I have pyfunge)
- possibly BATCH (since this is a Microsoft Computer, it can run .BAT files, but I haven't tested this on many programs)
I understand that many people use other languages too. On this site, we want to be language agnostic and encourage (maybe even require) this on most challenges. However, on a king-of-the-hill, the challenge host actually has to run all the programs, so this might be difficult if there are too many languages.
Judging by the votes on this comment, our users also want language-agnostic king-of-the-hill. Would it be unreasonable to require answers to be in specific languages? Alternatively, I would be fine if each answer provided an interpreter in one of the listed languages for programs that aren't supported.
Note: Interpreters/compilers are often big files and I don't know if they are hiding files elsewhere. If I just had to delete one file / folder, I would be more okay with downloading interpreters, but I'd still prefer that they were posted with the answer so I could control the location (keep the files with other "for fun" program files, for easy deletion when I feel like it) and easily delete them.