Are meta-"opinion based" questions opinion based?

Question

Imagine a question:

I have to do <some task>. I am trying to do this task in <some situation>. I can think of two technically valid ways to do this task. Here they are:

Way 1:

 //snip

Way 2:

 //snip

Does there exist a clear cut advantage to Way 1 over Way 2 (or vice versa), or is the choice here just a matter of opinion? Am I just bike-shedding?

Would a question of this sort be subjective? The issue itself very easily could be, and, in fact, the question-asker is clearly not certain. But could there perhaps be an objective, on-topic question asking whether it is or not?

Meta-thought: Is this question opinion based? ;)

Answer 1

Sure!

Suppose there are actual differences between Way #1 and Way #2. These would be good answers:

• "Way #1 exposes you to a race condition where...but the X in Way #2 avoids this problem."
• "Way #1 has better worst-case performance, even though Way #2 is, on average, faster"

Alternately, if there's no difference:

• "No. Way #1 actually just calls something that wraps the method called in Way #2 [link to docs]"

would be a great answer too, particularly if it's not something super obvious.

On the other hand, asking people to choose which of the following is better:

if(quantity==1)
   printf("1 item received.\n");
else
   printf("%d items received.\n", quantity);

or

printf('%d %s received\n.", quantity, quantity==1 ? "item" : "items");

is indeed boring, but that's what downvotes are for. If you're feeling more generous, it's potentially a duplicate of a question about the ternary operator too.