33
votes
Ethics of posting if you're a bad programmer
Of course you can!
We welcome any and all participation. How you choose to participate is up to you.
I went over a year without posting any challenges at all; all of my participation was answers. ...
- 24.6k
32
votes
When is the best time to post a challenge for optimal views?
When is best for views?
As it turns out, it doesn't matter all that much. Consider this plot:
The mean number of views is slightly higher on Mondays and Wednesdays but things are pretty consistent ...
- 24.6k
28
votes
Can I ask a question seeking feature requests for a golfing language?
Stack Exchange is not an issue tracker
I haven't voted on this since it was posted, because I wasn't really sure how I feel about it, but now that the Pyth question has been posted, I don't think ...
- 196k
24
votes
Is it OK to post restricted challenges where only some people may participate?
No
There is absolutely no benefit to restricting a question to users of a certain type. This is would only serve to make users who are not allowed to participate unhappy.
However, I do think it is ...
Wheat WizardMod
- 96.5k
23
votes
What to do about mathematical concepts with different definitions?
The challenge poster must specify the intended definition
If such a mathematical ambiguity is spotted, leave a comment and vote/flag to close the challenge as "unclear what you're asking".
The ...
- 40.5k
20
votes
Do I have to verify all answers?
In an ideal world, you would. Practically, you normally can't — a) because of people using proprietary languages, b) because you might get many dozens of answers. Many answers will include a link to ...
- 196k
20
votes
The smallest Android app in the world
Yes, this is on-topic
“How do I golf this?” questions are welcome here, and this is essentially one of them: the OP wants to golf the smallest .apk file that Android’s package manager recognizes. If ...
- 68.1k
18
votes
Which is better - a catalog Q, or a shortest code Q?
This is a false distinction.
On every code golf question, people answer in a variety of languages, striving for the shortest solution in that language. If it were simply a competition for the overall ...
- 144k
18
votes
Would "render the Mona Lisa in 1000 bytes" be on topic here?
Yes
But I think popularity-contest might not be ideal.
How I would do it is choose some specific image of the Mona Lisa that everyone has to aim for, then give each submission a score based on how ...
- 89.3k
17
votes
Which is better - a catalog Q, or a shortest code Q?
I'm not a fan of catalogues for the sake of catalogues. A catalogue should have a raison d'être. The original question about catalogues talks about
the catalogue nature of challenges corresponding ...
- 43.1k
16
votes
Is PP&CG the right place to ask my question?
I do not think so.
This site is for challenges and contests and your question does not seem to include any kind of challenge. You can fully answer this question yourself just by looking at the docs of ...
- 43.7k
15
votes
What outputs should I allow for decision problems?
One consistent, and one non-consistent
The thing I like about Truthy and Falsy is that often you may do things like output 0 for falsy and everything else for ...
Wheat WizardMod
- 96.5k
15
votes
Accepted
Does the OP have to explicitly state the winning criteria?
Yes, the winning criterion needs to be specified in the challenge
First, tags like code-golf where the winning criterion is obvious in theory. You're right that it's probably not entirely necessary, ...
- 196k
15
votes
How do I get better at writing questions?
Use the sandbox
Even for the most experienced challenges writers, catching all open questions and potential issues of a challenge can be difficult. That's what the Sandbox for Proposed Challenges is ...
- 210k
14
votes
What makes a sequence an interesting golf challenge?
Number of approaches
I often see that questions which have multiple ways of being solved are more interesting than challenges which have only one exact way to approach the problem. If that's the case, ...
- 44.3k
14
votes
When is the best time to post a challenge for optimal views?
Fundamentally, there is none
I don't have specific data but I can say from experience that a question posted on any day at any hour can become popular, can become a Hot Network Question, you just ...
- 89.3k
14
votes
How should challenge authors be rewarded for creating exemplary challenges?
I suggested a potential feature request related to this when we were discussing ideas about the fact that we're not a Q&A site. This is of course a suggestion that would require changes to the ...
- 196k
12
votes
Do I have to verify all answers?
For code golf, you don't have to verify the answers yourself. Verifying all of them personally could be time-consuming or downright unfeasible (after all, not all languages are free and run on all ...
- 210k
12
votes
Code kata should be added to Programming Puzzles & Code Golf
Code Katas are a great idea in general, but I don't see how they fit into this community. The main requirement for every challenge posted here is that it has to have an objective winning criterion. ...
- 196k
11
votes
Are Sizecoding Questions On Topic?
Size coding is on topic; I agree with Peter Taylor that an objective winning criterion can be in theory formed. However, it doesn't seem to have many advantages over code-golf questions, which as @...
- 21.4k
11
votes
What makes a sequence an interesting golf challenge?
Make sure there's no trivial closed form solution
This is probably a corollary of Adnan's answer, but even with sequences that have many definitions and approaches there is often a simple closed form ...
- 196k
11
votes
Rep requirement for asking
No
There are a few reasons I think this is a bad idea, any one of which I think can stand alone. Considered together, it seems like an obvious conclusion to me.
Ask Questions, Get Answers
This is what ...
- 19.7k
11
votes
On-topic to ask for help with an pre-existing code golf challenge from another site?
Attribution
First and foremost, I have no idea why one of the comments suggested editing the attribution out. If a challenge is taken from elsewhere (with minor modifications), full attribution is ...
- 210k
11
votes
Should we repost a challenge because of a changed consensus?
No, We should update the old one
Challenges like the Quine challenge have tons of answers, and most of them are valid. Making a second question would either require all the existing valid answers to ...
Wheat WizardMod
- 96.5k
11
votes
Does the OP have to explicitly state the winning criteria?
No, as long as the winning criterion is already clear from the tags
Most challenges on PPCG are code-golf. A lot of distraction, duplication, and possibly inconsistency is caused by having to re-...
- 15.2k
11
votes
How do I get better at writing questions?
Use the FAQs
In addition to Dennis' answer to use the Sandbox, we also have two FAQs related to challenge writing --
Things to avoid when writing challenges
Things to consider when creating a ...
- 43.3k
11
votes
Accepted
How can we clearly define "Must work for theoretically large values"?
This is what I use in my challenges (with slightly different wordings):
The algorithm should theoretically work for arbitrarily large input values. In practice, it is acceptable if the program is ...
- 104k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible