End-to-end arguments in System Design [1] convinced me that a lot of special case handling I thought was necessary was really optimization and optional. Though

End-to-end arguments in System Design [1] convinced me that a lot of special case handling I thought was necessary was really optimization and optional. Though I already understood recursion pretty well when I read this, the explanation Paul Graham gives in section 2.7 of ANSI Common Lisp was pretty useful [2]. [1] http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.pdf http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoen... [2] http://ep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/acl2.txt http://ep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/paulgraham/acl2.txt