Mickey Mathieson wrote:
> I wounder why recursion is still taught in school if
> completely bad practice!

As I said in another post - recursion isn't forbidden/completely 
bad/whatever.  IMO, recursion is a concept that has no business being 
taught early on.  Same thing with pointers.  The whole point of Safe C++ 
is that you don't have to learn those things because you work with 
libraries that already take care of those things for you.

I'd rather see first-semester students learning things like running SQL 
queries and moving data around the web (using a pre-developed base 
library).  Practical stuff.  Things students want to do because they see 
"real world" value in doing such things.  And employers WANT students to 
be learning these things because that makes the student more valuable to 
them.  Recursion is pointless when you consider what the business world 
wants.  Billions of dollars are wasted every year in training students 
as new employees because educators aren't doing their jobs.  Obviously 
recursion is useful, but the number of scenarios where it is useful is 
extremely limited compared to what employers want.

Not that I expect the status quo to change anytime soon.  Just a wish.

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