Is it okay to ask which snippet is considered the most clean?

Question

Is it on-topic to ask a question with two more or less equivalent snippets, and ask which of the two snippets is considered the most clean?

The way I see it, there are four possible answers here:

1. Snippet #1, because [reason].
2. Snippet #2, because [reason].
3. It's a matter of taste (because [reason]).
4. You should write it like this [demonstration] because [reason].

The obvious concern here is questions that are likely to cause debate. Would the potential-debate-factor be limited by the limited set of answers? Are such questions more prone to debate than regular code review answers?

Example

switch (score)
{
    case 0:  return "Love-All";
    case 1:  return "Fifteen-All";
    case 2:  return "Thirty-All";
    case 3:  return "Forty-All";
    default: return "Deuce";
}

vs.

if (score > 3) return "Deuce";
string[] scoreNames = { "Love-All", "Fifteen-All", "Thirty-All", "Forty-All" };
return scoreNames[score];

Answer 1

To me, such questions are interesting and useful. There's not much difference between saying, "here's my code, is there a better way of doing it" and "here's two pieces of my code, which is the better way of doing it".

The poster could of course post both pieces of code in two separate questions, each of which is 'valid' in the narrow sense. But I don't see that this helps either the poster or the site.

Answer 2

As long as the code is real (non-example), belongs to the asker, and still involves review, then yes, it is okay to post such questions. In fact, we already have a comparative-review tag for this.