12

My understanding of Programmers.SE (as opposed to SO) is that SO is for implementation problems - "I'm trying to do foo by baring my baz but it isn't working", while Programmers is for whiteboard problems - "I'm starting my project and I'm considering three different ways of doing this (foo, bar and baz) and I'm not sure which would be best".

Based on that understanding, I feel that my question (which would be about how to best represent some data) would be more on-topic here than on SO. I'm still a little concerned, however, that this might be considered too opinion based or too "bad subjective". Are these questions okay?

I'd be happy to provide some more details as to what my question would look like if that's necessary.

1

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
8

Generally speaking if the question has a definite answer and is not-implementation dependent, we'll take it. Example:

Which hashing algorithm is best for uniqueness and speed?

This question has a definite answer and is in no way implementation dependent. The top answer is a work of art as well as being good solid science. This is the standard that we strive for. Obviously, we don't expect this level of amazing from every question but this is the direction people should be heading in.

If your question winds up being too implementation specific, we can always just migrate the thing. No hard feelings.

1
  • 1
    IMO ALL questions asking for "best" are by definition poor questions. Especially in cases like this where the author admits to knowing that he's asking contradictory requirements yet doesn't provide any information about which balance he is looking for (and what he mentions is already more than what's usually mentioned in such cases).
    – jwenting
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 12:43

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .