r/ProgrammerHumor • u/shizzy0 • 2d ago

Meme howProgrammingHasChanged

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u/robin_888 2d ago

It's supposed to teach the concept of recursion, which is important, but hard to grasp for some.

Discussing performance and optimizations can happen if the principal is clear.

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u/temperamentalfish 2d ago

I know, but there are so many better examples. Mergesort, for instance. It shows why the concept is important because it breaks the problem into smaller, more manageable problems, without doing repeated work.

Fibonacci should be taught as an example of when a problem can be solved recursively, but shouldn't.

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u/Silly_Guidance_8871 2d ago

When I was studying, Fibonacci was used a lot to teach the value of dynamic programming. But agreed, it's a terrible example of when to use recursion.

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u/fdar 2d ago

DP is just recursion+caching. 

I think it makes sense to first recognize that the problem can be solved with recursion and then decide if DP is needed to improve performance.

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u/Bliztle 1d ago

Only if you're doing it top down. Bottom up is usually taught at the same time, and is useful to lessen stack and cache size.