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You see a similar issue with recursion: it's never seemed particularly difficult to me. But there are, apparently, lots of fairly smart undergraduates who are t
by scarmig 14y ago
You see a similar issue with recursion: it's never seemed particularly difficult to me. But there are, apparently, lots of fairly smart undergraduates who are taking a CS class who just can't grasp it.
A tree is recursive--maybe that inability to "get" hierarchical folder structures is somehow related to an inability to understand recursion?
- rahoulb 14y agoI think it's the same sort of idea but at a lower level (as it were). The (very) few times I've tried to explain recursion to non-CS-types have always been met with "I sort of get it" looks (meaning "we'll have forgotten in five minutes"). But there seems to be no pattern to the non-tech people who don't understand tree-views. The only thing I've noticed is it might be maths-related - as people in the accounts departments invariably get trees straight away.