[plt-scheme] Perplexed Programmers

On Aug 29, 2007, at 18:13, Marco Morazan wrote:
> In my small circle of curriculum influence there is a great deal of
> resistance to the Ht-series. One of the major reasons is recursion. I
> was told many times that it is too hard for beginners.

To my surprise Monday, first day of the semester, a group of complete  
novice programmers understood recursion.

Tell this to your resistors:  Recursion is easier to understand if  
you are young, or young at heart, if closing your eyes and just  
"using the force" feels natural.  Recursion is hard if a person  
thinks it is hard and then works too hard on expansions.  A person  
who is uptight will have problems with recursion, because recursion  
involves trust.  You focus on this (first L) and trust that what  
happens with (rest L) is correct as though it has already happened,  
even as the devil is screaming in your ear that operations on (rest  
L) are still in the future.