What are the conditions for asking a Wolfram Mathematica question here in this community instead of the specific Mathematica community?
There is even a specific tag for this: wolfram-mathematica
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2 Answers
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There are a couple of things Code Review wants from a question.
- There must be code. (We're not a code writing service)
- The code must be in the question. (Not on a third party site)
- The code must work as the asker intends. (No debugging)
- The code must be real, and there must be enough for us to comment on. (No pseudocode)
- The author must understand the code. (We don't interpret and explain code)
- The author must want to do the same thing in a better way. (We're not a code writing service, but we want to promote good code)
Other than that we're pretty chill.
To note however, we're not a code re-writing service, and so some answers may contain no code. This is as we're a knowledge sharing site, not a code-rewrite site.
For more information you can see the What types of questions should I avoid asking? and What topics can I ask about here? pages. Which should contain the same as the above in a more colourful way.
An example is you have a program with a bunch of ifs, you wonder how it could be improved, so you can employ a better strategy in the future, and post the code on here. You get an answer, that does not contain any code, and you go away happy you've learnt something new.
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2\$\begingroup\$ This answer is pretty much a general answer, regardless of language tag. Where Mathematica allows questions like
I want to do X, how do I do this?, we need something working and reviewable. All your answer is missing is an obligatory link to the help center :-) \$\endgroup\$– Mast ModJun 15, 2017 at 6:01 -
1\$\begingroup\$ 6. The author must want to do the same thing in a better way. \$\endgroup\$ Jun 15, 2017 at 7:49
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1\$\begingroup\$ @Mast Yeah, we don't really have tag specific off-topic reasons, so... no wonder it's generic. :) Darn, I knew I was going to miss something, ): I'll update to add that and the off-topic page thanks, :) \$\endgroup\$– Peilonrayz ModJun 15, 2017 at 8:20
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\$\begingroup\$ @SimonForsberg Huh, that's not an off-topic close reason... But I'll add it none the less. Thanks \$\endgroup\$– Peilonrayz ModJun 15, 2017 at 8:20
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\$\begingroup\$ @Peilonrayz Maybe not a specific off-topic close reason, but it is after all exactly what Code Review is all about. \$\endgroup\$ Jun 15, 2017 at 12:20
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The Mathematica site is for helping you when you have questions about how Mathematica works. So if you have a question that can be summarized in a simple sentence like "How do I ..." or "Why does ... happen?", you should post there.
If you've written code, it works, but you wonder if it could work better, then post here. Our titles are one sentence summaries of what the code does, e.g. "Draw a circle from user input". The implicit question on every post here is "What do you think of this code? And how could it be better?" If you have a more specific question, we may be the wrong place. We do accept guidance like
- Could this run faster?
- Could this use less memory?
- Could this be more readable?
But if you have other specific questions, you may be straying into off-topic territory here.
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\$\begingroup\$ So can I insert a relatively large code here to be shortened that works and I have no doubts? On the other site, the giant codes are not welcome. \$\endgroup\$ Jun 16, 2017 at 11:54
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4\$\begingroup\$ We accept any length code that will fit in the question with room enough left for explaining what the code is supposed to do. \$\endgroup\$– mdfst13Jun 16, 2017 at 14:01
ifs, you probably can guess the code's sub optimal, so you post here with the aim to find a better way to do what you'd done before. It's mostly so you know we're a knowledge sharing website, rather than a code-rewrite service, :) \$\endgroup\$