Problem with recursion? (was [plt-scheme] Re: Novice needs help writing function )

On Fri, 2008-01-04 at 13:00 +0200, Yavuz Arkun wrote:
   . . .
> And while I am on the subject of examples, why do introductory 
> programming books use so many mathematical examples? IMVHO, there are 
> only three subjects that can interest a young student: sex, video games 
> and programming tools. Putting the first two aside for PC, an example 
> about an text editor would be much more interesting than, say, Fibonacci.

Careful with that.  I was entranced with numbers as early as the third
grade, and I had friends all the way through school who were also.
Don't disenfranchise such youth in the name of broad appeal.  I came
upon programming much later (college age), and I found recursion
fascinating and appealing precisely because you could compute my old
friends the Fibs in the same way they were defined.  The efficiency
difference between recursion and iteration was such a let-down.

 -- Bill Wood