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

Yavuz Arkun writes: 

> Bill Wood wrote:
>> On Fri, 2008-01-04 at 13:00 +0200, Yavuz Arkun wrote:
>>    . . . 
>> 
>>> ...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.
>>  -- Bill Wood

> Yes, I agree that mathematics is interesting for some people, including 
> me. However, I took the OP to mean that there is a large chunk (majority? 
> sizable minority? undesirably large in any case) of the student body who 
> are unable to understand recursion as it is usually covered. For them, 
> something else needs to be done (other then giving up teaching recursion.) 
> 
> BTW, I first learned about the Fibonacci series in high school, and we 
> were told they are generated by "start with 1, 1, and then add the last 2 
> together to get the next one...", e.g. iteratively. For me the recursive 
> definition is contrived, and I saw it for the first time in intro 
> programming books. I guess this shows that prior teaching of iterative 
> style kills some neurons forever. 
> 
> Anyway, probably everyone has their favorite example/exercise style. Mine 
> happens to be programming tools. My ideal introductory programming text 
> would be built around an extended series of examples/exercises that 
> construct increasingly complete instances of a tool, say a text editor, or 
> even a compiler, that leads to a simple, but real-world program. Maybe 
> someone could deconstruct Emacs and rebuild it as a teaching exercise? ;)

Frankly, it is difficult for me to imagine a more BORING exercise than a
construction of a text editor. There is nothing there, but chores. Emacs is
a complicated machine, not just a text editor. It is an integration of
programming tools extremely heterogeneous, which should be taught separately
even if the possibility of their assembly must be recognized early. 

Getting back to the first posting.
I propose that somebody finds a way of teaching recursion through sex. 

Or vice-versa. 


Jerzy Karczmarczuk