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So, I was wondering if you are allowed to ask Code Golf questions that need an API, library or framework.

Let me explain this further, for example lets say I wanted to do some question related to graphics such as drawing a specific specific complex geometric object (lets just say ASCII art isn't an option). Could you do something like that in Code Golf or is it supposed to be only for console programming? Because it says nothing like that in Acceptable Level of code golf Questions except for potentially rule 6 Quality in the first answer:

[A good code golf should] not be optimized for one language or one class of languages.

But, I don't think that stuff really makes it optimized for a class language that has libraries made for it that support things such as graphics in the case of the example above.

The major reason I am asking this is that there are no questions that have the tag [code-golf] on stackoverflow that involve graphics, audio, or anything that would require a general purpose library and am wondering why not?

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1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Essentially, what you've quoted means "the given problem should be able to be solved in any language."

The only thing that's assumed is that the language supports some form of character I/O, and the program itself consists of a string of characters (as the goal is to write the shortest program using character count as the yardstick).

Finding a library/framework/API that works with all languages is impossible. Straight up, it's impossible. Regardless, Code Golf is all about minimalism. You should be able to open up a new project in your favourite language, and solve the problem directly. And then spend many, many hours obfuscating and compressing your source code to get a good score.

Maybe you can simplify the problem such that it would be possible to give a solution without using a graphics library.

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Well, it wouldn't just be graphics, audio and other stuff too. Also, I didn't interpret that quote that way. I thought of it more as: It should not be tailored to any specific language. –  thyrgle Jul 8 '10 at 4:32
@thyrgle: Right, but it's kind of two things in one. If you're not tailoring the problem to any one specific language (fair play), then you can't restrict the set of allowed languages either. I guess that's a subtle difference, so I can see why it might not be interpreted like that. In any event, my point about finding a common library/API/framework for all languages remains. –  Jon Seigel Jul 8 '10 at 5:17
Ok. Just wondering if you could do it that way. I guess not then. –  thyrgle Jul 8 '10 at 5:38
"And then spend many, many hours obfuscating and compressing [...]" Hehehe. Total time waster, that encourages abuse and bad style. And they're like programmer crack... –  dmckee Jul 8 '10 at 17:15
@dmckee: Hahah yeah. I did one and it was pretty fun. It does take a lot of time to give a competitive answer, though. –  Jon Seigel Jul 8 '10 at 17:22
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