What do we want to do for question+code that are seemingly well-thought-out and well-implemented, but ultimately it alludes to a design question?
Good questions (as in: well written) that are outside the scope of a site can always be migrated to a site that does include such questions.
Software Engineering.se happens to take the following questions:
- software development methods and practices
- requirements, architecture, and design
- quality assurance and testing
- configuration management, build, release, and deployment
Emphasis mine.
However, since this is a specific-question question, let's fully explore what's going on here.
The question 'is doing X a good idea' is a subjective question. Some subjectiveness is OK, but:
Rule #1 for any SE is "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face." Most qualities of a bad subjective question flow out of deviating from that basic premise. Polls, hypotheticals, rants, brainstorms, list questions, and idle curiousity where there is no real problem to solve do not qualify as a legitimate question. These kinds of questions will be downvoted, closed, and/or deleted.
(source)
And:
What kind of questions should I not ask here?
Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered! (source)
So, taking the phrasing literal, it's off-topic on the entire SE network.
If we throw out that phrase though, let's see what's left:
- OP had a problem and designed utilities to work around those.
If the utilities are not only designed but fully written as well, there's no problem.
- Code appears to be written.
So far so good.
- Usage of the written library is shown.
Oops. That's good for context, but not really what we want to see. We want to see implementation. The 'how' behind the 'why'.
And that's where this question went wrong, IMO. This question could've been on-topic, but focused on the wrong parts. Example usage is great, as a side dish. The main dish is missing.
So, yes, this question is design oriented and therefore off-topic for Code Review. But a different orientation could've saved the question.
Of-course, this may not have been to any benefit to the OP if all he wanted to know was the literal question asked, so re-writing it without permission wouldn't have done any good either.
As to whether Software Engineering would've taken it: not sure. It probably would've landed in a grey area there. One of the types of questions they specifically forbid is when there is no actual problem to be solved: “I’m curious if other people feel like I do.” It could be argued that's exactly what this question boils down to.
