Post History

What are the rules of programming language compliance?

Code Golf seems like a fun idea to me, since I'm a programmer by trade and "language lawyer" nerd as a hobby.

 But every time I checked the code golf site on SE, I dismissed it as nonsense, because the vast majority of all programs that were posted & highly up-voted there won't even compile on the most basic, compliant compiler for that language. 

That kind of defeats the whole point of code golf, since anyone can just post some random incomplete snippet which can't even execute - then claim that they reduced the amount of characters quite a bit by doing so. 

Obviously the site needs some set rules for this. Could someone illuminate this part to a newbie:


- What are the rules in general for programming language compliance?

- What are the specific rules for individual programming languages and where can one find those?