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While I agree with the overall argument, reading this was a bit frustrating. The article made all kinds of interesting points and observations, but didn't reall
by cloogshicer 4y ago
While I agree with the overall argument, reading this was a bit frustrating. The article made all kinds of interesting points and observations, but didn't really explain any of them. For example, I'd love to know what the difference between recursion and cyclicity is.
- bitwize 4y agoA recursive definition for something makes reference to that self-same definition, but it always has a base case to break the endless regress. Non-programming example: in grammar, a noun phrase might be defined as a noun, or a modifier and a noun phrase.
- omnicognate 4y agoInfinite recursion (without a base case) is still recursion and, with tail call optimisation, can be useful in practice for the same reasons infinite loops can be useful. I don't really see why the author doesn't see the joke as recursive. If it's about the lack of a base case they're misguided. Maybe the author is distinguishing between functions that recurse by calling themselves directly (direct recursion) and ones that call themselves via other functions (indirect recursion). Or maybe it's about recursive functions vs cyclic data structures. Or maybe it's something else as neither of those explains why the quoted joke is incorrect either. You'd think in a section titled "Recursion vs Cyclicity" the author would make some effort to explain the difference, but apparently that matters less to them than calling things "dumb".
- SilasX 4y agoI don't even think it made interesting points, just "haha, who uses factorials and Fibonacci numbers?" and "I bet students don't like programming the same thing in different ways." (No? That part definitely interests me, but either way it depends on what would resonate with your student audience.)