1
\$\begingroup\$

I am asking about my this question for reopen - or an explanation if it is still offtopic.

A further problem what I can see, that - although it is not language-specific -, the question effectively still reduces the usable languages to the hardware-near, C-like procedural solutions. As I can see, many of you like more esoteric, interpreted languages. But it is not mentioned in the help center.

Another possible problem is, that this is a hard problem. I couldn't sleep a week long until I've found a solution. On my opinion, already to find a solution is enough hard, optimizing it to the fewest bytes isn't a really comparable challenge.

But, from the other side, it was the most interesting problem I've meet in years ago. Maybe it is not really "code golf" (in the sense of tricky & funny code optimizing), but surely a very interesting "programming puzzle".

I would most like to use the following winning criterion: "Winner is anybody who finds a solution". In the (imho) highly improbable case if there are multiple working solutions, then I would say the first is the winner.

\$\endgroup\$
5
  • \$\begingroup\$ What about code-challenge? A code challenge is a competition for creative ways to solve a programming puzzle with an objective winning criterion not covered by other scoring tags (e.g. code-golf). \$\endgroup\$
    – Jerry Jeremiah
    Sep 11, 2015 at 0:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ @JerryJeremiah Well, the solution I've found is quite creative (on my opinion). I think, the code challenge is here. Maybe the formulation is a little bit complex, but it is only for to make it more clear. \$\endgroup\$
    – peterh
    Sep 11, 2015 at 0:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ It's maybe not a duplicate, but in some sense you question is the same as this one. \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter Taylor
    Sep 11, 2015 at 14:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ @PeterTaylor That is about a new challenge type, while my question is about the reopening my question on the main site. Please read my current question again, more carefully. \$\endgroup\$
    – peterh
    Sep 11, 2015 at 14:34
  • \$\begingroup\$ The way I see it, both questions are "Should 'first answer wins' questions be on topic?" \$\endgroup\$
    – Peter Taylor
    Sep 11, 2015 at 15:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3
\$\begingroup\$

It is not usually necessary to request that a question be reopened: editing a closed question automatically puts it into a review queue. However, all three people who reviewed it voted to leave it closed.

I am asking ... [for] an explanation if it is still offtopic.

Although on a plain meaning of the words you could argue that "First answer" is an objective winning condition, it is not generally accepted as such for the purposes of being on-topic on this site. As I pointed out in comments, a previous question about this win condition met with a strong negative response. The best solution would be to find an objective win condition which is intrinsic to the code: length, memory usage, ...

There's no guarantee that even after such a modification the question would be reopened. I personally think that to be sufficiently specified to be worth attempting an answer it needs more details about the CPU and memory models, so that answerers know whether they need to reason through the effects of pipelining, caching, etc.

\$\endgroup\$
2
  • \$\begingroup\$ See the current version of the question - first, I extended with a pythonic problem description, and second, I changed the winning criterion to better match the site profile. How about now? BTW, it is a hard problem, for me toke it a week to solve that, but the result was so fun as if I had completed a rubic cube. I don't think a real race between the different solutions would be here interesting, but the joy of the working solution. This is why I don't consider the win criterion an important thing - actually, if a single working solution would exist, it will be probably a big fun. \$\endgroup\$
    – peterh
    Sep 11, 2015 at 18:19
  • \$\begingroup\$ It doesn't matter, how byte long is it. But, if it is needed to select somehow between multiple solutions, then I will do that. Thus, if you had a better criterion (for example, which rewards somehow the clearness of the problem), I am ready to change it again. \$\endgroup\$
    – peterh
    Sep 11, 2015 at 18:23

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .