Is it possible to reduce the character limit from 30

Question

I've already had a couple of golf answers that were less than 30 characters - even with the character count included.

Is it possible and sensible to reduce that limit to 20 or 25 perhaps?

Answer 1

I would say a good answer should include an explanation of how it works, so there should be no trouble at all to write at least 30 characters.

Answer 2

I agree that we should reduce the limit, but by how much we will only learn from usage. The examples you're likely referring to:

• rot13: 5 char solution with about 9 additional characters that were necessary = 14 characters in total.
• sqrt: 11 characters with 11 other characters that were necessary = 22 characters.

I think 20 might be a useful limit, but as I say we'll see over time. For now, you could have added a link to the rot13 function for the first one and explained to non-Python users that ** is a power operator for the second. Both would tip you over the 30 character limit.

Answer 3

I've been fortunate enough to be under the limit a few times and what it encouraged me to do was actually follow the guidelines for what constitutes a good code-golf answer, including:

• Try to explain your solution.
• You should show how the program or function is executed, accepting the input, and printing the output.

Source: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/tags/code-golf/info

Answer 4

If you start with a header stating the language and number of characters used, it should help fill up enough reach the minimum character level.

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JavaScript (21 characters)

alert("Hello world!")