There is always a confusion of the questions related to [digital design](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/digital-design), because the definition on the [help center](https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) mostly covers "software".

> 
> * a specific programming problem, or
> * a software algorithm, or
> * software tools commonly used by programmers; and is
> * a practical, answerable problem that is unique to software development
> 
> 
> 

If a question is directly related to a [Hardware Description Language](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/hdl) like [SystemVerilog](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/system-verilog), [VHDL](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vhdl) and so on, the question is on-topic by consensus. On the other hand, many questions don't include any code snippet in HDLs.

Let's have a look at some examples.

* The [first](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45147417/checksum-inside-altera-fpga-jic-file) question is about a simulation/synthesis tool. If this kind of tools are treated like software tools, it's fine. If not, we will need to flag too many questions as off-topic. Actually we already have tags for some tools like [ModelSim](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/modelsim) and [Vivado](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/vivado).
* The [second](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44435397/accurate-method-for-calculating-clk2q-setup-time-hold-time-of-flipflop) question is about timing analysis on digital circuits. It's related to my profession (that doesn't mean I have a good answer for the question), but I don't know whether it is on-topic on Stack Overflow.
* The [third](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39114875/d-latch-vs-d-flip-flop) question is about [flip-flop](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/flip-flop)s. A user has a comment that claims the question is off-topic, because Electronics SE is the best fit for the question.
* The [fourth](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40521012/look-up-table-division-synthesizable-in-an-asic-fpga-design-makes-any-sense) question is about [ASIC](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/asic) and [FPGA](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/fpga) design. It questions physical performance of the two hardware implementations.

We can extend the number of examples, but these four should be sufficient. I also think that [Electronics SE](https://electronics.stackexchange.com) is the best fit for most of the digital design questions, but that doesn't make them off-topic on Stack Overflow. More arguments must be provided for that.

So, here is the question: Is digital design on-topic without HDL code?