[plt-scheme] Perplexed Programmers

You know, its funny you talk about trust like that. I can sometimes
feel my mind "tensing up" when I'm trying to understand something and
then I know it is time to go fix a bug or two in DrScheme.

:)

Robby

On 8/30/07, Geoffrey S. Knauth <gknauth at sunlink.net> wrote:
> 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.
>
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