Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Meta

Comments on Answering challenges with languages newer than the challenge

Parent

Answering challenges with languages newer than the challenge

+4
−0

Somewhere Else, there was a long-standing rule that to answer a challenge, you couldn't use languages, language versions, or features that were created or introduced after the challenge was posted. If you did, the answer would have to be flagged as "non-competing." After some time, the rule was seemingly removed by consensus. The only real fear was that new languages would have some kind of advantage, but attitudes on the competitive aspect seemed to change over time (especially with golfing languages being created more frequently.)

I haven't seen any discussion in this community (or a written rule) so I wondered what the public opinion is. Stated reasons on the thread for allowing newer languages:

  • Answering really old challenges with newer languages features. Otherwise old challenges would have to be reposted to allow newer answers, creating a bunch of duplicate content.
  • Competition generally occurs within a language, not all languages or classes of languages competing. People understand that Jelly will always beat Java, but one Java answer could beat another, or maybe a C++ answer.
  • "Catalog questions" like Hello World.
  • Adding a built-in to your language really only causes you more effort, and might be downvoted anyway if it's obviously created to solve one problem. Coming up with unoriginal answers is only less fun for you.
  • Some users would be discouraged from using newer languages.
History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

0 comment threads

Post
+2
−1

Languages made specifically for a challenge after it was published

This is the general problem with allowing languages newer than the challenge. This is already considered a standard loophole, and the might be downvoted anyway... point will apply.

Some questions heavily benefit from this(cops and robbers, answer chaining), so it might be worth enforcing on those questions since language restrictions are a general part of the game.

Eitherway, manually specifying this rather than having it be a rule is better.

History
Why does this post require attention from curators or moderators?
You might want to add some details to your flag.

1 comment thread

Conditional based on challenge type (2 comments)
Conditional based on challenge type
snail_‭ wrote about 3 years ago

I can agree with making this rule a requirement on specific challenge types, or allow authors to specify it in the rules, but I'm not sure if the concerns apply universally. Also, I didn't see the default loophole you refer to. Do you have a link/quote?