🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Oct3.180209.3023@athena.cs.uga.edu>, mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes:
> Some people have a lot of trouble understanding that there is room in the
> world for more than one programming language, and that different languages
> are suited for different purposes.  Of _course_ Prolog isn't COBOL.
> 
> As for what language to teach first, I like the trend to use more abstract
> languages such as Scheme for beginners.  I contend that recursion is a
> natural way of thinking about problems _until_ you are brainwashed -- in
> an intro BASIC, FORTRAN, or FORTRANomorphized Pascal course -- into
> thinking it's either impossible or unduly difficult.  One of the first
> things we do is teach people _not_ to program recursively.
> 

   Recursion isn't that easy anyway.  Since it is based on induction, and since
normal folks tend to have a problem with induction, then it isn't surprising
that recursion is not the easiest concept to understand.  Of course, certain
programming languages make it harder to understand.  For example, in Pascal,
a beginner might ask what happens to the original variable values passed in
when a recursive call is made.  It is useful, to my mind, to say that the
function "stores" away these values for later use.  But then, perhaps, I, too,
have been brainwashed by the process.

   Recursion is one of those things that take a little understanding to master,
but is really neat once you get the hang of it.  Of course, this assumes that
the problem's solution can come about by breaking it into smaller pieces
and applying the same recursive solution to the smaller case.


--
   ______    __    __   ___  ____
  / ____ \  |  |  |__| |   \ |  |    Charles Lin
 | /    \_| |  |   __  |    \|  |    e-mail: clin@eng.umd.edu
 | |        |  |  |  | |  |\    |   
 | |     _  |  |  |__| |__| \___|    University of Maryland
 | \____/ | |  |____                 "I hate big sigs." -- Moo
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