What programming language should we consider for the code-golf solution ? [closed]

Question

If we want to prevent having ridiculous answer for Code-Golf with esoteric language that are made up just for the challenge, we need to define what are the acceptable programming language.

The boundary I would think of are the following (note that those are just up there as an example):

• Does the programming language have at least 10 page of documentation about it ?
• Does the programming language can do anything else than the challenge for which it's made up.
• Can you find at least a project using that language on the web ?

Answer 1

I think that as long as a compiler was released before the question was asked, it is a valid language. This removes stupid answers such as "I created language X with this command Y that solves this in one character".

Answer 2

I was thinking about this a lot, since the esoteric languages like APL, GolfScript, J, ... always win and suck out the enjoyment out of CodeGolf.

• It's not fair because these languages were created just for the challenge.
• In many cases, they use non-ascii characters to "compress" source code (Sclipting, APL)
• For me it's fun is to see a surprisingly short code or a trick in language which I use for serious things, not a squeezed code of some esoteric language, even if it's shorter, because that's not surprise - you already expected it, the language was created for that.

So I think it makes perfect sense to make specific challenges for non-esoteric languages only. It could bring the enjoyment back!

Back to the definition. Basicly, esoteric language is a language that is not normally used for any real bussiness and was created just for challenges. More objective criteria for what esoteric language could be:

• It is listed in Esoteric language list - with the exception of PERL and perhaps other mistakes.
• It doesn't have a tag on StackOverflow with at least 2000 questions.
• Is not part of any standard OS release (meant as an exception for small standard tools like awk, sed, dc etc. even if they don't have enough questions at SO).
• Uses non-ASCII characters.
• Yours "Can you find at least a project using that language on the web?" is a very good idea, but there might be very alternative and very esoteric projects too...
• You can also name specific languages you are sure you want to exclude just to prevent finding a hole in the rules :-)

Other ideas to develop (just brainstorming):

• Is not used for teamwork programming of products that other people use.
• Is not used for products other people pay for.
• Majority of operations use postfix notation and take operands implicitly from a stack.

Answer 3

Why do you demand "the language is being used in the real world"? Golfing is not a real word problem. Reducing the size of your program may have been a real world application many years ago. Reducing the size of a program is still an issue for web applications using tons of JavaScript but that process is not golfing. Golfing is about finding the shortest program, not take an existing program and just squeeze (remove white-space, line breaks, only one char identifiers etc.) it.

Can you find at least a project using that language on the web

That one is trivial. I can write webpages in esoteric programming languages, in fact, I've already done things like that.

Does the programming language have at least 10 page of documentation about it

Why would the quantity of documentation matter? Extremely simple languages barely need one page of documentation.

My feeling is that it's best to implement "soft" site-wide policies like not using built-in features of languages that automatically solve the bulk of the problem.

Why not? Golfing is about finding the shortest program in a language. If the language has a function which nearly does the job than that is the shortest way to do it.

The absolute shortest answer is secondary to me, and certainly a very short answer in a tool language that was designed for the domain of the problem isn't that interesting at all.

Again, if that is the case you are not golfing. It's not golfing if you just want some decent looking solution.

Are there two or more web-frameworks for serious use for the language?

That's no way to measure anything. Haskell has many good web-frameworks but is still considered (at least from the java/oop mainstream) to be a silly language nobody would use in production.

To sum up: If you want language agnostic golfing than some esoteric looking languages or even plain esoteric languages will win in some challenges. That's just the way it is. If you look at anarchy golf J kicks ass. It wasn't invented for golfing (probably ;)) but it turns out to be very good at it. Look at it as a sport. You won't set a maximum height for a basket ball player just because some are bigger than others and that turns out to be an advantage in some situations.

Otherwise create code golf problems and judge each language separately.

If you are not interested in golfing but interested in comparing your pseudo-leet-skills then just don't do golfing. Invent something else.

Answer 4

My feeling is that it's best to implement "soft" site-wide policies like not using built-in features of languages that automatically solve the bulk of the problem. For example, we might disallow using h in GoRuby for a Hello World problem, or using the built-in Easter-calculation functions in PHP for an Easter problem.

That way, you can use an esoteric language if you like---as long as you're not using a built-in function to solve the problem in 1 character.

Answer 5

Edit: I removed the Bash version (it was buggy and I couldn't seem to fix it), and I updated the C/C++ version (now identical) due to a better implementation in the comments. I also added equivalents in several other languages.

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I have a list of minified implementations of the greatest common divisor operation in several different languages. Maybe this can influence some of this discussion.

ANSI C/C++:
int a(int b,int c){return c?a(c,b%c):b;}

K&R C: (permits implicit `int` types)
a(b,c){return c?a(c,b%c):b;}

Common Lisp:
(defun a(b c)(if(zerop c)b(a c(mod b c))))

ECMAScript 5:
function a(b,c){return c?a(c,b%c):b}

ECMAScript 6: (uses implicit global)
a=(b,c)=>c?a(c,b%c):b

Forth:
: g begin ?dup while tuck mod repeat ;

GolfScript:
~{.@\%.}do;

Java:
int a(int b,int c){return c>0?a(c,b%c):b;}

Haskell:
g a b=if a > 0 then g(b `rem` a)a else b

So, here's the stats for each of those examples:

• Common Lisp: 42
• ANSI C/C++: 40
• K&R C: 28
• ES5: 36
• ES6: 21
• Forth: 38
• GolfScript: 11
• Java: 42
• Haskell: 40

Answer 6

I suppose I don't mind seeing answers in GolfScript or other similar "made-to-golf" languages -- but I admit that I don't consider them serious answers.

How 'bout this as a test: Are there two or more web-frameworks for serious use for the language?

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Update:

Please understand: I wasn't proposing the test as a criteria for "serious language", but as a possible criteria that code-golf questions could use for the languages they'd like to score.

It feels to me like there are roughly four categories of languages in use when answering CodeGolf:

• Main stream general purpose languages: C, C++, Phython, Ruby, etc...
• Tool languages, that are generally aimed a certain domain: awk, bash, sed, MatLab
• Golf languages, aimed at winning code golf but which no one would use in production: GolfScript, etc...
• Obviously inappropriate languages for code golf, which people use for fun: Cobol, Visual Basic, LabView

Now, of course it is impossible to put hard and fast definitions on these categories. But I think that for a given problem, looking at the shortest solution in a main stream language is interesting, and has merit, separately from shortest overall (which is often in a tool or golf language).

I like code golf, because I like seeing the inventiveness of the answers, and the ways that people find to extract hidden power from a language's features and shortcomings. The absolute shortest answer is secondary to me, and certainly a very short answer in a tool language that was designed for the domain of the problem isn't that interesting at all. (Aside: I love good question design that manages to keep the solution from being solely in a single domain so that all languages have to stretch!)

In light of this, my proposed test (which was certainly cheeky) was for what would constitute a mainstream language. -- Though I have to admit, I've since found at least one web framework for bash on the web!