2 ms·

What is impractical about recursion?

• msh 5y ago
  Nothing, maybe I was unclear. My point about recursion was that it was hard for students just starting university to understand.
  • qwerty456127 5y ago
    Why? How can recursion be hard to understand? I don't understand.
    • djur 5y ago
      The difficult thing isn't the concept of a function being defined in terms of itself, but translating between iterative and recursive versions of the same algorithm. Recursive algorithms can feel "backwards" when you're used to iteration. Real-world procedures are much more likely to be described iteratively than recursively.