We should reverse [reverse-engineering]

Question

reverse-engineering has only two questions:

• Reverse Engineer Polling Statistics
• A small puzzle. Why does this code work the way it does?

The second one is closed as off-topic.

The first one isn't really even to do with reverse engineering in the software related sense - it's basically "reverse engineering" in the same sense that subtracting two numbers is "reverse engineering" of adding two numbers.

Its tag info is unhelpful:

For challenges involving reverse engineering.

Reverse engineering is the process of figuring out how something works by analyzing it.

So I propose we delete it.

The only argument I can think of in favour of keeping it, is that it might be suitable for some obfuscation-type questions - but there's already obfuscation for that!

Answer 1

Agreed, delete reverse-engineering

I think you make a solid case that the tag is currently not worth keeping: it is on a small number of questions, some of which are closed; the tag wiki info provides almost no usage guidance, and any that I could think of editing in would make the tag incredibly broad; and, overall, seems like the perfect target for some tag pruning.

Given that it's only on two questions at the moment, it should be non-disruptive to just edit it out of the tags on those two, and let the tag Roomba delete it in the next week or so.

Answer 2

Could be useful for programming-puzzles

Specifically, I've been thinking about ones that would require reverse-engineering how a language works in order to write a certain program in it. Not sure how good of a case this is for keeping it, since it can always be recreated if necessary, but it does seem like it could apply to some interesting and on-topic posts.