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Code golf questions are a perennial favorite on Stack Overflow, but are under constant threat of being closed for being off topic or not a real question. Now that Programmers is live, do Code Golf and Code Challenge questions have a home here?

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I don't support this, but in the interest of completeness, note that the FAQ says code golf does belong here.

Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in subjective discussions on software development.

This can include topics such as:

  • Software engineering
  • Developer testing
  • ... (snip for brevity) ...
  • Software law
  • Code golf & programming puzzles
  • Freelancing and business concerns

(emphasis mine)

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  • Huh, that's new. I guess we inherited them from the Community Wiki shakeup. That's hell of lame.
    – user8
    Oct 15, 2010 at 16:47
  • Turns out it was added over a week ago.
    – user8
    Oct 15, 2010 at 17:57
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Honestly, I don't want to see them here or on Stack Overflow. I think that there should be a code golf stack exchange for them.

They don't belong here because they aren't subjective - someone can either write a shorter program or you have written the shortest program to do that task. They don't belong on Stack Overflow because they aren't an explicit question.

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  • I agree. This is exactly that the Area51 site is for, having more specific sites than SO or programmers. It would be much easier to go to codegolf.stackexchange.com rather than heading to here or SO and searching for them
    – Richard
    Sep 2, 2010 at 21:19
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Have any code golfers considered starting a new SE? "Code Games," maybe?

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This isn't just about subjective questions - but about forming a home for questions that don't fit well on StackOverflow. I think that they would be better here.

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  • I agree, but I find difficult to convince users who post Code Golf questions to post them here.
    – apaderno
    Sep 2, 2010 at 13:48
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    This isn't out of beta yet, so the existence of this site shouldn't affect StackOverflow
    – Casebash
    Sep 2, 2010 at 21:44
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    I'd like this site to be defined as something positive, such as "questions about X belong here", not something negative, such as "questions rejected by SO belong here".
    – David Thornley
    Oct 20, 2010 at 14:35
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I'm kind of in the middle. On SO there is a huge community, many people following [code-golf], and therefor a large group of people willing to answer.

On here, this is more of the idea's of programming then actual code writing. I want to come here when the only questions in my skillset are about things I havn't use yet. I don't want to come here and see more code.

On the other side, there are tons of close happy, downvote happy people that will close anything that's not a specific question, argue the heck of it, and then have others drag the squabbles to meta. The 3k+ community seems to be split on the issue.

However if we move them to here, most questions will become unanswered because we don't have as large of a community. We would essentially kill code golf for the entire S[EO] network.

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  • +1 for "I don't want to come here and see more code." For the record, I love code golf, and think it is fine on SO.
    – AShelly
    Sep 13, 2010 at 16:58
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Would a separate SE site with only Code Games have succes? Maybe, maybe not...

Is there enough interest in such separate SE site? Maybe, maybe not...

I see this site as a pause for developers that want to improve themselves, know about other developers or just have plain fun; for this last reason I see that Code Golfs fit if there aren't too much of them. Maybe people should first mail some Diamond moderator(s) with a proposal to let it be checked so it is sufficiently good and if it's the right time to be posted before it may be released to the Code Golfers...

But our current FAQ states discussions in "subjective discussions on software development", Code Golf doesn't fall under discussion but some questions I've seen at the site currently don't fall under that term either (list posts for example) so I don't see this to be an issue.

A lot of users will see this site as the subjective counter-part of Stack Overflow,
why have yet another big site for such a small activity? This leaves me wondering...
Can such site really become the next Google Code Jam or Project Euler? Maybe, maybe not...

Regarding Thomas Owen's answer:

They don't belong here because they aren't subjective - someone can either write a shorter program or you have written the shortest program to do that task.

Maybe the Code Golfs should be made sufficiently complex to allow for enough room to improve...
Apart from that there isn't a single answer though. It's like a list of tools: An answer for each language!

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