4 ms·

Frankly, I'm still confused about what "recurse center" means even though I know what recursion is. I wonder what it will first mean to people outside of indust

by wyc 12y ago

Frankly, I'm still confused about what "recurse center" means even though I know what recursion is. I wonder what it will first mean to people outside of industry. I also can't unsee the substring "curse center". :/ Slightly off-topic: How would someone structure a study to predict the effectiveness of a rebranding?

mtviewdave 12y ago
In my technical writing class in college, the professor made the point that "recursion" is based on the verb "to recur", and that "to recurse" means "to curse again".
- herge 12y ago
  > "to recurse" means "to curse again" If that doesn't sound like programming, I don't know what does.
- ScottBurson 12y ago
  Yes, though it's a bit of an odd situation: we have two noun/adjective pairs, recursion/recursive and recurrence/recurrent, which don't mean exactly the same thing though they're related (see for example [0]), and which all come from a single verb. It makes some sense to create a second verb by back-formation to reflect the two meanings. [0] http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~jiang/cs141/recur-tut.txt http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~jiang/cs141/recur-tut.txt
kazinator 12y ago
A recurse center is is either: - a minimal room made of concrete walls, having one door and one window - a recurse center, plus the opening of one more window - the union of two recurse centres horizontally, by a tight wall-wall juxtaposition of the two of them, with the removal of one of their walls, and the opening of a door in the remaining one, if necessary - a similar vertical union, with the addition of a stairwell - the union of two recurse centres by the addition of an external hallway, and the necessary doors. - a few additional cases that can be neglected for the purposes of this paper
- felixgallo 12y ago
  Unfortunately one problem with the recurse center's concrete rooms is that they were only architected to be able to handle immutable people, looking outside is strictly forbidden, and when you leave a room, it collapses.
  - kazinator 12y ago
    It doesn't collapse in any way that you care about, though. What is interesting is the possibility of tail recursing, but over a regular stack that is continuously abandoned. So the foundation and lower floors disappear, yet the recurse centre grows ever higher into the sky.

by wyc 12y ago

mtviewdave 12y ago

In my technical writing class in college, the professor made the point that "recursion" is based on the verb "to recur", and that "to recurse" means "to curse again".

herge 12y ago
> "to recurse" means "to curse again" If that doesn't sound like programming, I don't know what does.
ScottBurson 12y ago
Yes, though it's a bit of an odd situation: we have two noun/adjective pairs, recursion/recursive and recurrence/recurrent, which don't mean exactly the same thing though they're related (see for example [0]), and which all come from a single verb. It makes some sense to create a second verb by back-formation to reflect the two meanings. [0] http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~jiang/cs141/recur-tut.txt http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~jiang/cs141/recur-tut.txt

kazinator 12y ago

A recurse center is is either: - a minimal room made of concrete walls, having one door and one window - a recurse center, plus the opening of one more window - the union of two recurse centres horizontally, by a tight wall-wall juxtaposition of the two of them, with the removal of one of their walls, and the opening of a door in the remaining one, if necessary - a similar vertical union, with the addition of a stairwell - the union of two recurse centres by the addition of an external hallway, and the necessary doors. - a few additional cases that can be neglected for the purposes of this paper

felixgallo 12y ago
Unfortunately one problem with the recurse center's concrete rooms is that they were only architected to be able to handle immutable people, looking outside is strictly forbidden, and when you leave a room, it collapses.
- kazinator 12y ago
  It doesn't collapse in any way that you care about, though. What is interesting is the possibility of tail recursing, but over a regular stack that is continuously abandoned. So the foundation and lower floors disappear, yet the recurse centre grows ever higher into the sky.