Do we need the [function] tag? [duplicate]

Question

I've noticed that 20 questions are tagged [function]. Looking at the questions themselves, they don't seem to have anything drastically different from other questions.

The tag wiki reads:

For challenges that ask for a function or involve functions in some way. (Also known as methods or subroutines.)

Doesn't programming involve functions (nearly) all the time? I think the situation is the same as the one with [algorithm] - the tag is far too generic and could be applied to almost any question, because any question can be solved with a function, and most questions allow functions as answers anyway. It is more useful to use tags that refer to specific types of function (e.g. recursion).

Should we burninate function?

Answer 1

No, we don't need the function tag. It is not very useful, and it looks like a meta tag to me, and those tags should be removed.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/08/the-death-of-meta-tags/

From this point on, meta-tagging is explicitly discouraged.

How can you tell you’re using a meta-tag? It’s easier than you might think.

If the tag can’t work as the only tag on a question, it’s probably a meta-tag. Every tag you use should be able to work, more or less, as the only tag on a question. Meta-tags, like [beginner], [subjective], and [best-practices], are useless by themselves — they tell you nothing at all about the content of the question.

Of course, many tags would not work as only tag here on PPCG because we always need a winning criterion, but if we would ignore that, function would still be useless as the only tag on a question, so I'd say we don't need it.

Answer 2

I did the usual: have a look at all the challenges.

I agree that using the tag for challenges which request a function (instead of a program) is useless. And this is how most challenges used the tag.

But there is a valid use case for having such a tag: for all challenges that actual deal with functions (as objects), e.g. challenges about higher-order functions or which are otherwise related to functional programming or programming-puzzles relating to functions. This is no different from the string or number tags.

So far, there are two challenges like this (with the tag):

• Call a method without calling it
• Golfed fixed point combinator

Additionally, it's a good tag to have for tips questions about functions in particular. There is one of those so far:

• JavaScript: Tricks to shorten onkeydown, setInterval etc

We should keep a tag for these cases, but I wouldn't be opposed to making a new one called functions instead (note the plural). Otherwise, I suggest that we rewrite the tag wiki and excerpt for function tag, to clarify that it should not be used, just because the challenge asks for a function - and then remove the tag from the other 17 questions, and leave it on the three mentioned above.

As Peter mentioned, there's already a functional-programming tag. We could either use that instead of functions (although the latter is probably a bit more general), or we could also subsume those four questions under a new functions tag. In any case, I'd rather not have both, because it will lead to no end of confusion about which tag to choose for some questions.