On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 5:14 PM, Alan Gauld <alan.ga...@btinternet.com> wrote: > On 28/08/12 17:34, Steve Willoughby wrote: >>>> >>>> >>> For some reason some beginners seem to find recursion a natural pattern. >> >> >> There is a certain "hey, you can do that? That's cool!" factor when you >> first discover recursion. > > > My point was that it seems to be a natural idea for many beginners, they > discover it without being told. They just assume it will work. > It comes up time and time again on this list from people who have > never heard of it but are using it. > > Whereas others who need to be explicitly taught about it find it totally > bizarre and mind bending. I've come to the conclusion that its a > right-brain, left-brain type of thing. For some it just seems logical, for > others perverse! > > Presumably John McCarthy was one of those who found it natural! :-) > > > -- > Alan G > Author of the Learn to Program web site > http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ > > _______________________________________________ > Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org > To unsubscribe or change subscription options: > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
Interesting idea. I thought it was pretty cool when I studied it, and re-study recursion, but I seldom think of writing code with recursion. It scares me in an unnatural way. I think that best problems for recursion are ones with really deep data structures, and i fear they will run out of stack space. No evidence, just my take on using recursion as opposed to liking to read how small some recursive solutions are. -- Joel Goldstick _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
