We haven't really talked about specified language challenges.
On Stack Overflow, we asked that all code-golf problems be language agnostic, but I don't feel that we are automatically bound by that ethic here. (I am in favor of language agnosticism being the default.) Anyone have thoughts on what limits if any should be imposed on posters in terms of specifying language to be used?
Brought on by Text compression in C or C++, though I think this question has some faults outside of the author's desire to see only one or two languages used.
Some of my thoughts:
- I suspect that any new language specific challenge posted will be followed by a nearly identical language agnostic one, and I am not sure that this is desirable.
- To the extent that code golf is instructive, it is not unreasonable to desire instruction in a particular language.
- Some challenges are natural in one class of languages and not in another class. For those combined heats will not inspire people to work in the "hard" ones, so perhaps a "Special Olympics" model worthwhile.