On 20-Aug-2010, at 1:17 PM, News123 wrote: > On 08/20/2010 02:26 AM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: >> On Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:00:16 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote: >> >>> Recursion can be quite a trick to get your mind round at first >> >> Really? Do people actually find the *concept* of recursion to be tricky? > Is this a sincere surprise or are you just boasting? >> >> If I remember correctly, my puzzlement about recursion lasted about 15 >> seconds. I remember thinking "How does the function foo know that there >> is a function foo when foo doesn't fully exist yet?", but once I accepted >> the fact that it just does it all just seemed obvious. Getting recursion >> *right* is sometimes tricky, but the idea itself isn't. > > Well there's two things where I remember, that at least quite some > people in our class (at least the ones who didn't do maths or > programming in their spare time) had problems with. > > This were recursion and Mathematical induction. (quite the same though) > > The fact, that you didn't have the issue doens't mean it's easy for others. > > > > -- > http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Well I guess why you did not have a problem understanding recursion is because you took for granted that it is the way it is. Most people, like me, try to reason why something is the way it is ! Hence, the delay in understanding the concept fully. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
