Questions tagged [policy]
This tag indicates that your question is about site policies. Usually, new proposals for policies or questions about existing ones will have this tag
238
questions
2
votes
1
answer
119
views
Must answers be given as SOURCE code, or is machine code acceptable? [duplicate]
It's been my understanding that answers in code golf competitions should generally be given as source code. But lately I've seen a few answers specified as x86 assembly, counting the size as the ...
- 1,297
2
votes
1
answer
71
views
Can I assume that the input will always be within the printable ASCII range (0x20-0x7E)?
Many challenges don't specify what characters the input consists of, so I often assume the input will only consist of printable ASCII chars. Is my assumption correct?
Note that this mostly concerns ...
- 40.5k
96
votes
5
answers
3k
views
Let's allow newer languages/versions for older challenges
I've been thinking for a long time that our non-competing policy for newer languages (or language versions) is harmful. Just for context, we currently require all answers which require implementations ...
- 196k
15
votes
1
answer
365
views
What to do about widely disliked questions that don't technically break any rules?
Sometimes a question is posted that widely disliked (often due to being too easy, or being excessively arbitrary, or playing around in a space that's been mostly comprehensively covered without ...
user62131
10
votes
3
answers
400
views
What assumptions about the file system layout can be made?
At times, it may be advantageous for a solution to a challenge to make certain assumptions about, for example, the directory from which it is run. For example, a bash script that compiles and runs a ...
- 71.4k
7
votes
1
answer
275
views
Should you answer a competitive question if your answer is not competing / is not competitive?
I'm curious, because some answers seem to be posted regardless of the winning answer. Should non-competitive answers be posted when better answers exist for entries of the same language?
- 3,833
5
votes
2
answers
184
views
Should we repost a challenge because of a changed consensus?
Golf you a quine for great good! is a great example, since it was posted before the quine consensus was made. That means it's cluttered with answers not following it. Should we repost challenges ...
- 40.5k
7
votes
4
answers
337
views
How do we define "deterministic", and is it required by default?
We seem to have implied restrictions that code submissions should be deterministic, but this doesn't seem to be well-defined or explicitly restricted as a loophole.
The closest loophole is this one. ...
- 23.3k
0
votes
1
answer
178
views
Is it permitted to upvote only to test submissions?
In order to properly test the submissions to Martin vs Dennis - Round 1, one would need to upvote the current lesserso their reps become equal, and then continue upvoting so the former lesser becomes ...
- 29.9k
14
votes
1
answer
246
views
What should be the process for updating an established consensus?
There's many cases in which someone has a question about what site policy should be, people come up with suggestions, and one of them becomes highly popular and thus is treated as a rule. So far, ...
user62131
0
votes
2
answers
90
views
What happens if I get upvoted but have already reached the daily limit?
The title says it all. I reached my daily limit today and noticed that one of my questions was upvoted after I reached the daily limit.
What happens to the reputation? Do I get it tomorrow or is it ...
- 49.4k
58
votes
7
answers
1k
views
A proposal to combat Meta Bloat™: The Big Consensus Freeze
I believe it's a widely acknowledged problem in this community that the number of meta posts a new user needs to know to figure out all the rules has long got out of hand. We require certain answer ...
- 196k
1
vote
0
answers
73
views
Can a language's True/False be used in place of their values in a sequence? [duplicate]
I'm asking this to find a consensus on whether it's okay for an answer to use True or False in place of the language's ...
- 23.3k
0
votes
0
answers
69
views
Can lambda parameter types be left off if potentially inferable from context? [duplicate]
This Java answer (and this one) uses a lambda that does not explicitly declare its parameter type, but this Scala answer includes a parameter type. in both cases, the type could be inferred when it is ...
- 523
2
votes
1
answer
95
views
Is Ctrl-C one keystroke or two?
Preliminary question: is it valid to score Excel in keystrokes? I guess it is, but I'm not sure what our policy is.
Assuming it is (or, in general, for languages that are scored in keystrokes), does ...
- 104k
0
votes
1
answer
278
views
"Windows" as a programming language?
I was going to give the green tick mark to the winning submission of this challenge, but I am unsure what to do. The shortest submission is this, which claims to use "Windows language", but I doubt ...
- 104k
1
vote
1
answer
119
views
Should stdout be ignored when the program is a function?
My understanding is that, when stdout is used for output, stderr is ignored. Similarly, it would seem that, when a function's return value is used for output, stdout and stderr should be ignored. ...
- 523
3
votes
1
answer
150
views
PPCG equivalent to http://stackoverflow.com/jobs
Dyalog's APL team is looking to hire, and we are more interested in golfers than regular programmers, as the former are more likely to have the right mindset.
Since codegolf.stackexchange.com/jobs ...
- 29.9k
2
votes
2
answers
140
views
How do we treat old answers in "languages" that aren't real languages?
This is a followup of this meta post about Wolfram|Alpha, but it is probably relevant for other "languages" as well. There seems to be a consensus that Wolfram|Alpha is not a programming language +19/-...
- 46.2k
2
votes
1
answer
241
views
Introducing FunKiller
I've invented a new language called FunKiller, which is designed to make radiation-hardening challenges trivial and boring. This is the JavaScript interpreter:
...
- 15.4k
2
votes
1
answer
133
views
Why is this answer considered non-competitive?
A few weeks ago I posted this answer on a challenge. Yesterday it was deleted because "it isn't a serious contender for the winning criteria" despite getting the second best score in the challenge. ...
- 1,720
1
vote
1
answer
43
views
Should "Operations with lists" be broken up into individual challenges?
As it stands, Operations on lists is in a bit of a weird place. It could be considered a multi-part challenge with minimal interaction between the subchallenges, which aren't allowed, but is pointed ...
user45941
1
vote
1
answer
125
views
Is it OK to delete old answers?
Since this is not a QA site as such, I don't think there's a whole lot of value in keeping old solutions around for future reference. And for new users to the site, it's a bit like discovering an ...
- 8,878
6
votes
3
answers
238
views
Command Line Arguments in Polyglots
It occurs to me that there isn't really a general consensus on how command line arguments should be treated in polyglots. So...
What should the consensus on command line arguments in polyglots be?
I ...
- 3,061
2
votes
3
answers
198
views
Trailing Newlines, Spaces, Limited Precision and Language Limitations
I think we should gather a list of all languages that are, by default, allowed to to do things differently on challenges that do not explicitly disallow it. Every question I write it seems that ...
- 20.6k
11
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Should we combine answers where the same code works in many different languages?
Take this recent challenge for example. There are many languages where the shortest solution is simply *. Likewise, for other trivial challenges, the same 1-byte ...
user45941
18
votes
3
answers
876
views
Should we disallow non-observable requirements?
One of the more recent things to avoid that's coming up a lot is the use of non-observable requirements. The most common incarnations of this are things like "no hardcoding", "implement this algorithm"...
- 196k
2
votes
1
answer
71
views
To what extent the answer is allowed to change the description in the challenge?
PS: Honestly I just proposed my first challenge on PPCG hours ago, so feel free to criticize me.
I just had my very first challenge published here and I ran into a problem that some answers are based ...
- 2,153
1
vote
0
answers
46
views
Are automata or state machines a valid choice of language? [duplicate]
I've noticed that some challenges could be solved using automata. For example, this challenge in closing XML tags could be solved using a pushdown automaton. Would such an answer be acceptable?
If ...
- 309
1
vote
2
answers
120
views
Bytecount for code solution
I know I'm probably on thin ice, but I tried an answer in the print "Hello, World!" challenge.
I consider it to be 5 bytes total, but the user ais523 pointed out that I had to count the ...
- 1,928
5
votes
1
answer
377
views
What if an interpreter update invalidates an existing answer?
I noticed earlier today that the Befunge interpreter on TIO no longer functioned in quite the same way as the old version (I guess this was caused by the nexus update). As a result, one of my old ...
- 8,878
15
votes
1
answer
496
views
Are challenges that may not be solvable on-topic for PPCG?
Consider the following example challenge:
Given a set of integers, output a truthy value if there is a non-empty subset whose sum equals 0, or a falsey value if no such subset exists. Solutions ...
user45941
16
votes
4
answers
963
views
Can serious contenders do more than the challenge asks for?
As our help center likes to put it:
All solutions to challenges should:
Correctly implement the required specification.
Be a serious contender for the winning criteria in use. For example, an entry ...
- 210k
20
votes
2
answers
920
views
What additional information should be allowed in a submission?
Unlike traditional coding competition sites, submissions (answers) on PPCG are free form; the only hard requirement is that all submissions must contain the scoring header and the code that solves the ...
- 210k
29
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Definite policy about duplicate answers
Every now and then, we get an answer flag the declares an answer a duplicate of another. So far, I haven't really acted on them – except for leaving a comment if the flagger hadn't done so already – ...
- 210k
4
votes
1
answer
348
views
Answers written in "joke" languages [duplicate]
As an answer to this question, I wrote an answer in the "programming language" 2014 (screenshot). The answer was deleted, accompanied with this note:
I'm temporarily removing this post in ...
- 3,929
3
votes
2
answers
82
views
Should challenges that give unfair advantages to certain users be off-topic?
Consider the following two challenges:
This Sandboxed challenge gives an unfair advantage to users who have been around longer and contributed more towards collaborative golfing efforts.
The original ...
user45941
1
vote
0
answers
53
views
What's the Java policy with REPL existing? [duplicate]
An extension of When do I have to include things like Java's public static void main.
Unless you've (probably) been living under a rock, you (probably) know that Java 9 is (probably) going to ...
- 371
10
votes
1
answer
308
views
Truthiness in Brain-Flak and similar stack-based languages
Stack-based languages don't necessarily fit in the pseudo-code model that constitutes our definition of truthy and falsy:
...
- 210k
7
votes
2
answers
473
views
What mouse interactions are allowed by default as part of Input/Output?
Essentially, a user's answer in Excel (now deleted) uses the drag-down formula feature of Excel, as described in the linked related meta question. I thought that from the highest voted answer to that ...
- 23.3k
28
votes
1
answer
562
views
Is it OK to promote my own posts in chat?
Occasionally I see other users posting links to their own answers or challenges in The Nineteenth Byte. Is this OK? Can I promote my own posts as well?
- 58.9k
21
votes
3
answers
581
views
Are physical analogs of programming legitimate?
By physical analogs, I mean solutions written via objects in the physical world. Specifically, I am referring to a couple solutions to this challenge (including my own and a couple others).
Should ...
- 5,716
16
votes
1
answer
476
views
On using multiple languages for a singular code golf submission
I was wondering if it were possible to use multiple languages in the same submission. Not a polyglot, but using each of the languages. I have two thoughts on this.
One language invokes the other. Let'...
- 39.9k
14
votes
1
answer
654
views
The smallest Android app in the world
I am interested in understanding what is the smallest Android app possible that the OS will allow to be installed. It need not have any function or interface (or even any executable code) - it just ...
3
votes
2
answers
215
views
Is "assembled" golflang code acceptable? [duplicate]
Recently, I have been thinking about creating golflang assemblers. Like assemblers, they just substitute a mnemonic(or a word) with the actual symbol. Since many golflangs aren't much more ...
- 2,808
19
votes
1
answer
239
views
May `dc` take negative input as it's designed to?
In the language dc, the - character is reserved strictly for subtraction, so it cannot be used to enter a negative number. An ...
- 983
3
votes
1
answer
159
views
What are the guidelines for formulating a Cops and Robbers style challenge?
I've been slowly forming in my head a question for a Cops and Robbers style code challenge, and it occurred to me that I actually don't really know the general details of how they're set out... Is ...
- 7,493
1
vote
1
answer
93
views
Necessity of Wrapping Solution into Method/Function
I've noticed that sometimes people using exotic languages like Brainfuck don't ever explicitly wrap a solution into a method/function. While sometimes I see solutions in Java and such where they are ...
- 13
9
votes
2
answers
348
views
Dumping the output as an answer
Sometimes, on kolmogorov-complexity challenges with a constant output, we get extremely boring answers that make absolutely no effort to compress the output whatsoever, and instead just literally dump ...
- 58.9k
13
votes
1
answer
714
views
Is HTML/CSS a programming language?
CSS can simulate rule 110 and thus is turing complete. Thus HTML + CSS is considered a programming language for our definition. However, as user @TimmyD mentioned appropriately
HTML+CSS is Turing-...
- 2,646