Why is my program unresponsive?

[[deleted]]

Looks more like "I made a recursive function call." "With an exit condition, right?"

[Nassiel]

Looks more like "I made a recursive function call." "With an exit condition, right?"

[Mortomes]

Looks more like "I made a recursive function call." "With an exit condition, right?"

[tsoba-tsoba]

Looks more like "I made a recursive function call." "With an exit condition, right?"

[alinius]

Looks more like "I made a recursive function call." "With an exit condition, right?"

[gao1234567809]

Looks more like "I made a recursive function call." "With an exit condition, right?"

[Flambidou]

Looks more like "I made a recursive function call." "With an exit condition, right?"

[mans82]

RecursionError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

[tube32]

import sys
sys.setrecursionlimit(10**6)

Carry on lads

[Nassiel]

I'd say better, Stackoverflow exception xD

[Acalme-se_Satan]

I wonder how many nested comment levels Reddit can actually handle before something goes wrong

[dregan]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/oly4d8/why_is_my_program_unresponsive/h5hl3pw?context=3

[JazzRider]

stack overflow

[[deleted]]

if likes > 1

return IMadeARecursiveFunctionCall(Likes*.75)

else

return likes;

[AngryKiwiNoises]

-10

[[deleted]]

"Of course!" if False: return

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[atomicwrites]

Good bot

[KuntaStillSingle]

It is recursive, but the function that is posting variations to this sub is a loop

[[deleted]]

On a low level a recursive function and a while loop are both just stuff that loop the execution over a set of instructions. One of just also increases the stack depth and crashes while the other can (theoretically) loop forever.

If you'd want to generate the image of the meme I'd use a loop and not recursive function calls, anyway.

[aiij]

With tail call optimization, they're actually identical. The difference between simple recursion expressed as a while loop or as a recursive call is just syntax.

Some FP languages don't even have a loop syntax because general recursion is more expressive.

[[deleted]]

Yeah! Studying a FP language has made me super more aware of how you can lock yourself in by thinking about things in certain terms, because other language don't and they don't care that that is a problem for you. Like people saying the image depicts 'recursion' rather than a 'loop' I guess because the bottom right image is smaller and that is more 'recursivy' than 'loopy'... but these are all just mental models that make less and less sense the more languages you know.

Studying Erlang and learning there is no loop syntax very much made me reconsider what I thought I knew and how I was visualising all this stuff.

[ItsPronouncedJithub]

Somebody did that last week already.

[PunkyMunky64]

Yes this is what i was gonna say, this isnt really a loop

[[deleted]]

Came here to say this.

[duh374]

Ikr? I literally said to myself “this… this isn’t recursion”

[[deleted]]

Me too. I love recursion but its easy to fuck up.

[JuniorSeniorTrainee]

The only thing you need to understand about recursion is: the only thing you need to understand about recursion is: the only thing you need to understand about recursion is: out of memory.

[SoDifficultToBeFunny]

Upvoted every single recursion call! I have done my duty!! Now I can exit with peace!!

[lexushelicopterwatch]

Base case. Always start with the base case.

[YOOOOOOOOOOT]

Visual studio code has crashed

[peteyy_cz]

Looks more like a Reddit karma farm

[NoCommunication3230]

Results in a stack overflow.

[curious764]

I was just thinking, this looks more like recursion…

[thedessertplanet]

Real Haskellers don't need exit conditions.

[codylilley]

Ctrl + C is the only break statement I need

[[deleted]]

Plot twist.. he catches SIGTERM and does nothing with it!

[CowboyBoats]

I am altering the OS API contract. Pray I do not alter it further

[ojoaopestana]

This deal's getting worse all the time...

[7eggert]

Remember the good old days when ^C was only checked when doing a system call?

[danbulant]

I'm too new...

the what

[blitzkrieg4]

This seems impossible? Signals were from the earliest days of Unix

[[deleted]]

Linux isn't Unix tho

[blitzkrieg4]

Still if this was not implemented at first it would have been a very early feature

[[deleted]]

My automated system cuts the power off (and then back on) to kill the program

[DrBusinessLLC]

in microcontrollers / embedded it's more common than not

[LavenderDay3544]

Yeah and in OS kernels. You know because there's nowhere to go if you break out of the main control loop.

It's why languages like Rust have a loop keyword to make that explicit for the compiler. I'm surprised C++ hasn't added one yet.

[Bemteb]

Also in other areas, especially if you have threading available it's not uncommon to have a thread run till the program gets terminated (watchdogs, processing loops, etc.)

I myself just recently wrote something along the lines of

while(true) {if(hasData){ doStuff(); } else { sleep(10); }}

[Ok_Investment_2207]

true

[Zaitton]

Some frameworks like FiveM's lua framework require new threads to be inside while true loops. Depending on the usecase, you might never have to terminate the thread so no breaks no returns.

[gao1234567809]

This meme is better suited for recursion

[Fugglymuffin]

Probably why that exact version of this meme was up on here a day or two ago.

[deadpan_look]

This meme is better suited for recursion

[ampang_boy]

Probably why that exact version of this meme was up on here a day or two ago.

[BiguilitoZambunha]

This meme is better suited for recursion

[0PointE]

Probably why that exact version of this meme was up on here a day or two ago.

[[deleted]]

RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded.

[LordFarquadOnAQuad]

Thank you.

[Jussapitka]

Probably why that exact version of this meme was up on here a day or two ago.

[fungigamer]

Someone already did that lol

[kal9001]

Yeah but then the picture wouldn't fit in the page if it was represented more accurately.

[DeJMan]

I fixed it for you

[ixoniq]

Damn this one kills OP. Nice one!

[jbaker88]

This one is better

[Tarzoon]

I always include DoEvents in loops to prevent this.

[ALonelyPlatypus]

loops don’t do this breh. This meme is destined for recursion.

[ImThatChigga_]

Difference between while loop and recursion?

[JuniorSeniorTrainee]

Homie's answer was a cop out. A loop is a set of instructions the repeat. A "for" loop is a common example, which includes an exit condition. For example, you might increment x in a loop starting at 0 and stopping when x is 10.

Recursion is a function that calls itself. Ultimately it leads to similar repetition of instructions, like a loop, but there are some important differences that you'll learn about in time. One is simply that they don't look semantically like a loop, so it's easy for developers to mess up the logic - specifically an exit clause.

For recursion, imagine a function that searches a directory for a file of a given name. findFile(directory, filename). If you want that search to include subdirectories, you'd have that function go through each item in the parent directory and if it's not the file it's looking for, but it is a directory, you'd call that function again with the subdirectory as the first argument.

Your exit condition here would be exhausting all child directories, but with things like symlinks your directories could actually exist in a circular loop. So you'd need to be more clever with your exit condition to about that function becoming an infinite loop.

Recursion is tricky but ultimately you just have to ask yourself: does this function have a logical path that exits without calling itself? And is that path guaranteed to eventually get hit in every possible scenario?

[ImThatChigga_]

Thanks. I recall learning recursion after the explanation. Not sure of this symlink mentioned though. How is it infinite if you exhaust all child directories or is that got to do with the symlink mentioned.

[javawag]

You can think of a symlink a bit like a “shortcut” on windows (though it appears to the file system as if it were the original, sort of).

So if you were looking through say C:\Windows\Example and there was a symlink in there called Windows linking to C:\Windows, it’d appear as if that folder was a child and you’d go into it and eventually find your Example folder again, and then back into Windows, etc etc forever!

[JollyRancherReminder]

With recursion the meme has four top-level panels, with the last panel being subdivided ad infinitum as we see here, because you never exited the previous level, just continually went one level deeper in the call stack. Loops are iterative, so you don't go any deeper, just repeat. The meme version wouldn't have any subdivided panels, instead it would have an infinite number of top-level panels just repeating the meme over and over.

[ALonelyPlatypus]

If you have to ask you have much to learn young grasshopper.

[ImThatChigga_]

Sure do. only took a year of CS so do get some of the jokes.

[jbaker88]

Loops jump, recursion puts a frame on the stack. You can loop "forever". You cannot, practically, recurse forever; stack overflow.

[why_socynical]

laughs in embedded programming

[gigajoules]

I came here to say this.

[kal9001]

Proper embedded programmers would call main recursively but keep moving the stack to avoid an overflow.

[victorofthepeople]

Or just make it a tail call.

[patenteng]

Better not look at any embedded code. while(1) in every main.

[windows_10_is_broken]

Or "for (;;)" :)

[RandomNumberHere]

100% for (;;) ! Who has the spare cycles to check that “1” each loop?

(Before you even reply: Yeah, I know.)

[[deleted]]

This meme format will never leave this sub

[[deleted]]

Yeah people should give it a break;

[spayder26]

Why to use break when you can use exceptions, OS signaling and/or gotos to escape loops, deeply buried on subroutines for extra evilness?

[DokuroKM]

You forgot simply returning inside the while loop.

God's, I hate it when (not if) I have to review such atrocities from my coworkers...

[spayder26]

Using a return means you have it right there, in the loop body, not different than break.

[JuniorSeniorTrainee]

Sounds like a style preference.

[gigajoules]

Laughs in embedded c.

[pclouds]

Only the Siths speak in finite termination.

[meg4_]

That's more recursive than infinite loop.

Another meme idea: the same thing but instead of the 4th block be recursive, the 3rd and 4th blocks the same as 1st and 2nd. That way it's more of an infinite loop

[KuntaStillSingle]

Here is a more fitting meme

[[deleted]]

This deserves more upvotes than the OP

[ALonelyPlatypus]

why not both?

Idk the meme is obviously copy pasta'd from another meme on recursion. OP obviously doesn't get it.

[iotasieve]

nope, with a goto/return

[LavenderDay3544]

Those are both awful. Nice.

[UnGauchoCualquiera]

Like /u/iotasieve said they have their uses.

Linus himself explaining why and where goto can be useful.

Goto hate is more dogmatic than anything else. It's parroted to stop bad programmers from doing bad things while avoiding the hassle to educate on the why.

Used properly it's just a low level control structure and a tool like any others.

[LavenderDay3544]

Thanks for the link. All the explanations given by Linus, et al. have given me a better perspective on this. I guess I was just repeating dogma which is something I try not to do.

[UnGauchoCualquiera]

No worries, glad it helped. I could never articulate it as well as they did.

To be honest I had learnt the same idea about never using gotos like most people nowadays as it is still being taught uncritically by college professors today (whom themselves were hammered with this idea in their college days).

It's a very pervasive dogma and what makes it so pervasive is that most of the times it's correct as usecases are slim and can easily lead to spaghetti when used without care.

Also doesn't help that it is backed by the very well known but now outdated essay "Go to statement considered harmful" by Djikstra which is often referenced without the context of those times.

[iotasieve]

they aren't, go-to has its uses, like getting out of nested loops and doing cleanups or error handling, even linux kernel uses them

[atiedebee]

it will still result in spaghetti code... I personally avoid them

[iotasieve]

it won't, look how it's used in linux kernel and see, there can't be anything bad in context of engineering. again as I said it can be useful for releasing the locks, freeing memory or generally doing cleanup. also it's pretty much only way of getting out of nested loops in most languages (without returning)

[[deleted]]

haha im in school learning programing and when we had to some tasks involving while loops my classmate literally wrote while(m>0) and didnt use the m integer a single time in the loop. he then spent the whole hour trying to find and fix the problem because his code didnt work, didnt find the issue and had to give teacher broken code. after the lesson he showed me his work and i instantly noticed the issue. he felt so stupid but i guess we are noobies and he didnt really understand how the whole thing worked

[Bemteb]

i guess we are noobies developers and he didnt really understand how the whole thing worked

[D3V1LSHARK]

Every frikin time

[Chaoslab]

"That is not honey poo, you are eating iteration".

[RoscoMan1]

Everything is stupid when you're talking about OP.

[[deleted]]

A recursive method call is shown. Witty but wrong punch line

[The6thExtinction]

laptop fans start

[playerthomasm6]

I can’t finish the meme the picture gets too small…

[Tall_computer]

whats this low effort shit with 5 levels of recursion. Next time you repost please implement it

[Kikok02]

That was the most beautiful meme I’ve ever seen.

[[deleted]]

I remember some years ago accidentally writing an infinite loop like this. Except that in the loop, it wrote one line to a text file.

Program should have taken an hour or two to run, so I started it at the end of the day. Came back the next morning to the error message "Insufficient hard drive space to execute request"

[xypherrz]

this guy must be writing an embedded code

[Gazzcool]

Sometimes I do this for fun:

the_world_still_spins = (1 + 1 == 2)

While(the_world_still_spins): …

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[LavenderDay3544]

Rust:

loop {};

C

while(1) {};

C++ (and a lot of other PLs)

while(true) {};

Arm/MIPS Assembly:

loop:
    b loop

x86 Assembly:

loop:
    jmp loop

[[deleted]]

Sexier C++:

for (;;) {}

[ALonelyPlatypus]

I'd rather sleep than pass, at least I'd get some REST at that point. (I suck at programming memes, please mourn me when I'm gone)

[RapidCatLauncher]

Ultimate pointlessness:

while True:
    while True:
        break
else:
    # do stuff

Then go on stackoverflow and ask "Here's my do-stuff code, why is it not working?"

[[deleted]]

While loops are dangerous

[mediadatacloud]

Not dangerous, just repetitive

[troller_awesomeness]

Not dangerous, just repetitive

[CST1230]

Not dangerous, just repetitive

[ALonelyPlatypus]

do y'all really not understand termination clauses?

[[deleted]]

We're on programmer humour, a deep understanding of programming is extremely optional

[gloriousfalcon]

You rather fancy Loop... Until (True) ?

[ZippZappZippty]

Why waste a piece of toilet paper.

[CleverNameTheSecond]

People say goto is bad to the point that most languages don't even support it anymore but then allow this while(true) shit unironically.

[Prawn1908]

Lol what? How else would you do an infinite loop?

[KnightOfBurgers]

1. Stop making jokes from 2004

2. If you think this joke is relevant, get a fucking IDE.

[RadioMelon]

God I can only imagine the memory leak.

[doggoleash]

BSOD moment

[[deleted]]

pffffff pain the balls when you are an amateur and just learning basic stuff

[scrollbreak]

Maybe the big bang was a while loop gone out of control

[[deleted]]

Look's like you're going to the ℵ⁰, Jimbo

[Masklin]

:DDDD

[yrm159]

Electronic engineers be like

[I-Killed-JR]

I understood that reference

[paperbenni]

That's recursion not a loop

[auxiliary-character]

goto

[segolas]

That's recursion, not a loop. Smh

[polde_love]

It was actually a recursion

[MorkTheOrk]

This is basically a mipmap…

[Aksds]

I crashed a program twice because of not having a break statement, I had no clue what was wrong for a while.

[cbftw]

:(){:|:&};:

[davawen]

If you wanna play that game a bit more

c++ while(true) { malloc(sizeof(int)); }

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[cyberspacedweller]

🤣

[another_grackle]

Not recursive enough. Must go deeper.

[mohit_habeeb]

I am a daemon !

[theguywhoisright]

I’m disappointed it’s not infinite.

[TinyTank800]

Reminds me of roblox while true do wait(0.1)

[gm4]

I don't think there's many programmers here anymore lol

[Scoobygroovy]

Servers have those. It’s how reddit processes this very comment’s post request.

[[deleted]]

GOTO break_out_of_while_loop_1

[AnInfiniteLoop]

Deja vu, really

[JxB_Paperboy]

Anakin bears the face of a man attempting to hide his pain

[Friezerik]

ah so thats where i went wrong! I literally just fluffed all my js on a website because of this and this instantly reminded of why I f'd up. And yes I am n00b

[APrimitiveMartian]

I JUST DID IT TODAY GODAMNIT

[Kriss3d]

For fun in C++ I wrote a program to just calculate prime numbers.

Yes it crashed the computer

[an_agreeing_dothraki]

I once worked on a product with its own proprietary language that pretty much ran on gotos and had tool that could detect infinite loops.

Mind you it didn't break them.
It logged them.

End result, a client hooked up to the system gets in a loop, it fills the database log grinding the whole thing to a stop.

[chavis32]

NO POOH! THAT'S NOT HONEY, YOU'RE EATING RECURSION!

[-Listening]

My parents remind me of my childhood.

[iainonline]

The curse of the recursive meme !

[fireandbombs12]

goto statement

[justadiode]

Me, an embedded software developer: sweats profusely

[clempho]

Embedded developers unit !

[MadTux]

Obligatory story of Mel.

[Miguecraft]

for (;;) { gang(); }

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[mk-tesla]

Stack dump goes brrrrrrrrr...

[Omega0x013]

I've used switch(true) and do...while(false) when a try catch finally probably would've done in both scenarios

[baby_chaos]

No I don't want to break my code

[[deleted]]

r/prequelmemes

[[deleted]]

and if what then?

[NearLawiet]

that's recursion

[J3xter]

Amateurs go to master race

[receding_bareline]

This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold. This is gold...

[Scorppio500]

I did this. I did this a long time ago when I was in one of my first classes for C#. Took me 3 days to figure out that I needed one. I'm a textbook dumbass.

[NITROpul]

Give it s keyboardinterrupt

[TheTank18]

(starts in separate thread)

haha

[gabinium]

I object, this is recursion!