Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
1,769
questions
2
votes
2answers
33 views
How do I let others use my custom golfing language?
I'm currently working on my own golfing language which is based on Python 3. Once this language is finished, what would be the best way to let other people use it? I know TIO is very widespread here, ...
9
votes
2answers
86 views
Should we remove unnecessary restrictions on the factorial challenge?
The Factorial challenge is one of the canonical challenges on our site. Just like "Hello World", "Add two numbers", "Primality test", and "Fibonacci", it ...
4
votes
3answers
62 views
Default policy for ouput in decision problems
Challenges tagged as decision-problem involve "deciding whether the input meets certain criteria". Although some challenges with this tag involve more than two categories, most involve only ...
5
votes
0answers
99 views
How can I improve my post?
Just recently I posted this king-of-the-hill question. It was a rock paper scissors contest, but opponents had access to each other's source codes. It wasn't very well received - it had some downvotes ...
2
votes
1answer
83 views
Unable to Delete and Unable to Close Vote
I've got a question that I really don't like (does not meet my standards, has repetitive answers because I did not realize how many languages had built-in functions for transpositions, etc).
I would ...
9
votes
0answers
151 views
What counts as “output” in SQL?
Some of the site's questions rule that something must (or must not) be printed to the output. My question is, in the case of SQL, what really is the output?
The ...
2
votes
1answer
86 views
Why languages encode their SBCS into UTF-8 and vice versa?
I saw that in many golfing programming languages with a SBCS other than UTF-8 there is a converter (encoding and decoding) that converts the code/file from the SBCS defined characters to UTF-8 and ...
1
vote
0answers
109 views
How to get reputation to post on the meta?
I'm sorry for posting here instead of on the meta but I'm not allowed to post on the meta. I need 5 reputation here to post in the sandbox. How am I supposed to get that if I am supposed to post in ...
4
votes
1answer
52 views
Do you gain reputation from upvotes from the meta site [closed]
I just have a simple question: Do you gain any reputation from the upvotes from the meta-site?
2
votes
2answers
55 views
Feedback for closed questions
I just posted a question available here: Print out a valid pokemon team! , which got closed due to lack of details.
I do understand that at first, my question was somewhat unclear, as mentioned by ...
-1
votes
1answer
82 views
Code Golf Contest(Idea)
Welcome to the idea of the Code Golf Contest, where many code golfers pit their skills against eachother in a Battle For Dream Island-esque competition!
The prize? 300 reputation!
The challenges will ...
-4
votes
2answers
169 views
What's so great about code-golf. We're in the 2020s and memory isn't an issue. How about code-FormulaOne instead?
The challenging nature of aggressively optimizing for program size has itself long been recognized
Wikipedia
In the old days, memory was very limited
The larger 360 models could have up to 8 MB of ...
15
votes
0answers
327 views
Goodbye PPCG, everybody stay healthy!
I just wanted to say goodbye, I have very little time for code golf lately and I'm losing interest, I don't know if I'll come back soon (if at all). What follows is just my random thoughts in no ...
10
votes
5answers
377 views
Why are some users so quick to jump on a bandwagon?
I've been lurking on this site long before I made my account, and I've seen many cases where people are downvoted simply because they post an answer in the same language as someone else and it happens ...
3
votes
2answers
185 views
Is “A solution wins if there's no strictly better solution in multiple measures” a valid winning criterion?
To cite a recently sandboxed challenge by l4m2:
Solution win if there's no strictly better solution, aka. no solution that take less or same amount of items in mapping table, less or same amount of ...
8
votes
2answers
266 views
Omitting trailing closing parentheses in Excel
When golfing in Excel, it is often possible to omit closing parentheses at the end of an expression. Excel will detect this, add the missing closing parentheses and ask if this is what was meant.
...
8
votes
3answers
279 views
Duplicate between the main site and a Sandbox entry
The community has encouraged users to post a proposed challenge to the Sandbox for a few days before posting to the main site, to get feedback in the interest of improving the question and and to iron ...
2
votes
1answer
106 views
Where do good questions go? [closed]
It seems now few questions show enough serious sense, and lots are just random requirements.
Where do good ones go, are they dilutioned, deleted or just posted less?
2
votes
1answer
91 views
How to ask for a parser
Refer to this challenge in Sandbox.
My major language is Haskell. In Haskell, a parser (type ReadS) is a function that inputs a ...
0
votes
0answers
103 views
How can hash be allowed in a input-testing challenge?
Immagine to have a group of elements \$G\$, and a challenge that requires to output truthy if the input is in \$G\$.
I suppose that in traditional programming ...
0
votes
0answers
63 views
Is this REST API question way too practical for the site?
I recently had one of the senior developers on my team code up a simple REST API server and client, using SSL, basic authentication, and .NET Core. I was a little shocked to see how much code it took ...
0
votes
0answers
59 views
How do I count C64 BASIC score? [duplicate]
So I recently posted 2 answers on C64 BASIC.
I first counted it in characters, but after reading more about how the Commodore 64 works, I decided to start counting it in bytes.
But there were ...
-2
votes
5answers
113 views
How do I get upvotes for my answers? [closed]
There seems to be a lot of implicit and undocumented tips for getting reputation here. Let's start with answers: how do I get upvotes for my answers? Feel free to post more tips here.
0
votes
0answers
90 views
Are Rubik's Cube fewest move type challenges allowed? [duplicate]
We have atomic-code-golf which lets us have challenges involving things other than byte count. So I wonder if Rubik's Cube fewest move challenge (FMC) type challenges are allowed. I see no objections ...
1
vote
3answers
105 views
Are we allowed to submit an answer which executes a shell command?
Many programming languages support a function which executes a shell command. C has system(), Python has os.system(), and there ...
1
vote
1answer
79 views
Would randomness-based languages be allowed? [duplicate]
I've been thinking about creating a language where it's impossible to create a constant with a known value. Thus, it's impossible to guarantee a program will work 100% of the time (though you'd be ...
1
vote
0answers
106 views
Why did I just get a 3 year old review?
I just did this low quality post review. However I noticed that this answer has had no activity for about 3 years.
This is rather odd. The post certainly has not been sitting in the queue for the ...
8
votes
0answers
128 views
CGCC Data Analysis #1: Tags
A few months ago I posted a few interesting bits of research on data from SEDE. It was fairly well-received, so I figured I'd do some more analysis. I might make this a weekly thing.
I decided to ...
3
votes
1answer
207 views
How to deal with an accidental chameleon challenge
What happened
I was about to post Does base n have any Rotate-Left-Double numbers?. Kevin Cruijssen told me in the sandbox comment that he got a proof that significantly simplifies the problem. I ...
6
votes
0answers
155 views
Any tips for running a low-maintenance KotH?
I'm working on a King of the Hill challenge for some point in the next couple of months. (Sneak Peek)
The problem I have is that last time I ran one it was pretty ambitious, and it became a heavy ...
11
votes
22answers
608 views
When it is and is not acceptable to edit someone else's post
TL;DR: In what circumstances is it ok (by CGCC and politeness standards) to edit directly a post (be it challenge, answer, sandbox question, etc), assuming the edit is done in good faith?
I know ...
21
votes
7answers
290 views
Challenge post-mortems
While to-be-posted challenges get feedback in the Sandbox (ideally), we don't usually reflect on challenges after they have run. And while issues and ambiguities in challenges do get pointed out, we ...
9
votes
2answers
339 views
Why are all the answers here being downvoted?
I noticed that most, if not all of the answers on Vowels up, consonants down are being downvoted. I raised a mod-flag but there's only one mod and I'm guessing they're already stressed with the load ...
5
votes
0answers
122 views
For fastest-code questions are new compiler optimisations as non-competing allowed?
I looked around and it seems that the language is defined by the compiler not operational semantics. In normal code golf new languages are banned because of the loophole of implementing the answer as ...
11
votes
16answers
464 views
Best of PPCG 2019 – Now Accepting Nominations!
You have chosen the categories for PPCG's "Best of 2019". We're going with 16 categories this year. Since all you amazing people have offered up a collective total of 16,000 rep in bounties, we can ...
11
votes
12answers
293 views
Community Promotion Ads — 2020
2020 has come! But… oops, where did the time go? It’s already March! Belated as it is, it’s time for a refresh of Community Promotion Ads!
What are Community Promotion Ads?
Community Promotion Ads ...
2
votes
1answer
95 views
Is it acceptable to rerun an old coding challenge as a new thread?
I ran this challenge a year and a half ago. It was a good time, and I want to run it again, with some additional statistical analysis on my end and some tweaks to the rules to clean up the format a ...
8
votes
2answers
196 views
Policy on answering challenges with cumbersome I/O
We've probably all seen new users ask questions with cumbersome I/O rules, like mandatory taking the input by reading separated lines of STDIN and outputting to STDOUT to give an example.
In those ...
9
votes
2answers
236 views
On “golf this for me” tips questions
Sometimes we get tips questions from a first-time contributor asking for help golfing a particular piece of code that they wrote. Often these question don't fare so well. Can we do anything here?
...
2
votes
1answer
95 views
Why hasn't this question been reopened yet?
I asked this question, and it was closed because I did not clarify what I meant by the word "randomly". Now I've clarified it but it is not reopened. What is wrong with it now?
11
votes
2answers
256 views
Is it acceptable to ask for Github Pull Requests for a King of the Hill challenge?
Background: I ran into numerous issues when presenting and running this King of the Hill challenge back in October: Write a bot to play Grid Game - I'm cooking up a new, similar challenge, but taking ...
4
votes
2answers
253 views
Do golfing languages support arbitrary-length integers?
During a conversation in my proposed challenge in sandbox, there had been some objections about requirements in the challenge.
I want to entirely ban a usage of floating-point numbers in the ...
0
votes
1answer
54 views
Do golfing languages support rational number arithmetic?
I proposed this code golf on sandbox:
Integer Logarithm
Take \$a \in ℤ_{>1}\$ and \$b \in ℤ_+\$ as inputs. Write a function \$f\$ that:
$$
f(a,b) =
\left\{
\begin{array}{ll}
...
9
votes
5answers
754 views
Ruleset for RGS's Golfing Showdown - competition is over!
RGS
RGS stands for RGS's Golfing Showdown, a golfing competition.
The competition has ended, final leaderboard at the end of this post!
1 - The format
The RGS will be a virtual golfing competition ...
3
votes
0answers
64 views
Is asking for a bounded time complexity allowed?
Say, if someone asks for a code-golf like this:
Test primality under polynomial time
Given a positive integer, test whether it is prime.
Rules
The algorithm must have polynomial time complexity in ...
7
votes
2answers
200 views
What should we do against the downvote flood in the sandbox?
In the last 3 or 4 weeks there are quite a lot of sandbox proposals being downvoted. A quick count in the first page reveals that 12 proposals are at -1 and 2 are at -2, and some of the -1s are ...
2
votes
2answers
46 views
Creating a multiple-challenge competition
I wanted to create a golfing competition that would be split in n different challenges, each posted with k days in between one ...
2
votes
1answer
93 views
Are all golfing languages friendly to Unicode?
I'm going to make a challenge involving Mahjong Tiles (U+1F000 – U+1F02F, though I'm going to use only U+1F000 – U+1F021).
...
2
votes
1answer
61 views
Consensus on another user posting another answer in the same language
Should another user post another answer, instead of commenting, in a language that already has answers from somebody else, in the following circumstances?
It is a modified version of the current ...
7
votes
1answer
213 views
What is too many sandboxed challenges?
I am very enthusiastic about this community (but I am very very young here) and I really want to contribute with new challenges.
On the other hand, I don't want to "clog" the sandbox with challenges ...
