4 ms·
when did the dumbing down of programming start? I'm all for code-reuse and componentization but common... recursion is programming 101!
by akamel 11y ago
when did the dumbing down of programming start?
I'm all for code-reuse and componentization but common... recursion is programming 101!
- jharger 11y agoWell, I imagine if your background/education wasn't computer science, and you didn't have an intro to algorithms and data structures, (and also not that into math) recursion would feel unnatural and strange. I say this because I was originally a self-taught programmer, and I hated recursion too. Once I went to school for a CS degree, I learned how awesome it really was, and now I use it all the damn time.
- dvt 11y agoI studied math and I find recursion unintuitive, whereas I find the Principle of Induction[1] profoundly intuitive (the two are very closely related). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction
- ScottBurson 11y agoSo what is it about recursion that eludes you? It is very strange to me that someone would find one of those concepts easy and the other not -- as you say, they are two forms of the same thing.
- dvt 11y agoI guess it's more reading and writing it in code. In my case, it makes sense to read code like I read a book: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. (Procedural, see?) A recursive function makes me do all these convoluted mental gymnastics when I'm just trying to figure out if Cinderella lived happily ever after or not.
- ScottBurson 11y agoI promise you, if you wrote and read more recursive functions, you would get used to them. It's just a matter of practice.
- coldtea 11y agoOne is linear, the other recurses (things into things into things). It's like comparing Star Wars to Inception.