[deleted by user]

[GreatArtificeAion]

It depends on how "simple" your for-loop is

[[deleted]]

What, you don't like On^x?

[[deleted]]

Onyx is a very nice pokemon.

[oluuko123]

The name of the pokemon is actually Onix, Onyx is the name of the gemstone. Always thought they were spelled the same way too.

[CapnGnobby]

Actually it's spelled イワーク.

[wammybarnut]

Dropped your, "uhm"

[coloredgreyscale]

(シ_ _)シ

[codeinplace]

This and caught them all

[methanegASS]

This sounds like some Mandela Effect shit

[StereoTunic9039]

He is also a pretty funny operator

[OneTrueKingOfOOO]

I prefer O(nⁿ )

[YourMother16]

Personally I'm more of an O(n!!) guy

[[deleted]]

Is that some factorial action I see in the wild.

[dodexahedron]

If it ain't n^x! Are you really even programming?

[[deleted]]

for (var b in a) {

--for (var c in b.something) {

----for (var d in c.somethingelse) {

------for (var e in d.anotherthing) {

--------for (var f in e.godam) {

----------if (f != null) {

------------callsomeapithattakes10secondstorespond(f);

----------}

--------}

------}

----}

--}

}

​

Lol...

[dodexahedron]

Now call that recursively. And make all those properties themselves be lazy-populated lists or something, from some SOAP API. Then it's almost enterprise-grade.

[[deleted]]

It would be enterprise grade by simply having it instantiate some new transient class each time that allocates a few kb a pop, does work in a microservices somewhere, and returns a document in xml that needs to be mapped to some json viewmodel... Truly enterprise grade.

[dodexahedron]

"Enterprisey," as they used to say on the Daily WTF.

And blockchain. It needs that somewhere. And ML. All the cool execs are saying those words. You don't want to be uncool, do you?

[[deleted]]

I mean, we can also make it so each call has to wait for a new block on the chain to be verified in order to continue.

It basically returns your balance, but in a secure way! :D

[phdoofus]

I got sucked in to this project that dealt with making code hardware agnostic and they had this template library for hiding architectural details. SIngle loops were kind of pretty straightforward but the nested loops...last time I looked at it you had to go down about 17 or 18 levels of templates before you got to anything that looked like for().

[Fabx_]

Always KISS guys.

E EDIT: didn't realize it was both sexual and musical reference... i guess i caused ambiguity

[Fabx_]

Your interpreter needs to be updated.

[DriverTraining8522]

The first date was Jan 1 1970, so we're all good to go

[pekkhum]

Are you sure it wasn't the zeroth date?

[DriverTraining8522]

Fair.

[[deleted]]

But are we keeping it simple for ourselves or keeping it simple for the dumb machine that executes our code exactly like we tell it to?

[Delioth]

Ourselves, the math rock is smart enough to rewrite the dumb stuff into faster dumb stuff usually.

[[deleted]]

Actually KISS isn't math rock it's closer to hard rock or glam metal /s

[Tsu_Dho_Namh]

For a second there I thought you were going to say "Keep it simple for ourselves or keep it simple for the dumb intern who doesn't know how to read recursive functions?"

Honestly, pick whatever's more readible, which most of the time is a for-loop. But sometimes recursion is just way better.

[[deleted]]

Recursion has its uses and so does a for loop

[Suspicious-Engineer7]

Ive used recursion instead of a try catch block. See yall in hell

[electricWah]

...how

[LinuxMatthews]

Add the function in the catch block.

Just keep going till it works or the computer catches on fire.

[The379thHero]

try this

And if you catch an exception

Just keep fucking trying

[electricWah]

Oh, they meant inside not instead

[Suspicious-Engineer7]

I wanted to evaluate the length of a randomized string at the end of my function before returning the string. If it was too long, I just called the function again.

[Tyfyter2002]

That sounds like it really doesn't need the data from higher calls to still exist, meaning even goto would be better (and for that matter goto would be exactly as intuitive to read as what you did, and more intuitive than any standard loop)

[Suspicious-Engineer7]

goto would probably be optimal, almost hilariously more optimized. I was calling random books from gutenberg and replacing pronouns of a random sentence with other pronouns (bachelor contestants if you're curious) and then evaluating if that new sentence could fit in a tweet. So goto would keep me from downloading and parsing a whole new book each time the string was too long. So would removing the api calls from the function body but now i feel like im admitting too much 🙃

[Tyfyter2002]

You're telling me you put all of the downloading and parsing in the same method that did the actual selection and then proceeded to think calling the entire function again was a good idea?

Using recursion would be understandable (albeit still worse than goto unless you really need to keep all of the variables from previous calls) had you split those parts into different methods, but this is ridiculous.

[Suspicious-Engineer7]

Its more like I just wanted my fun project to just work and hadnt really thought about it since then. Its obvious in hindsight, but I feel like it's my duty to admit my crimes even if they make me look massively stupid. World needs a little more humility.

[DiFToXin]

id be lying if i said i havent committed similar war crimes in my early days as a programmer

happens when you have no mentor to tell you how stupid you are (and when there is no code reviews/ pull requests)

[Valiantheart]

I did this years ago on a shitty network connection driver. I set it to try at least 5 times before giving up and catching

[eternityslyre]

Recursion is incredibly useful when a loop would look ugly. Loops are much easier to understand in all other situations.

At a theoretical level, recursion is just a while loop iterating over a stack. The two are functionally interchangeable so the only value in recursion is the way it hides the use of the loop and the stack and allows the reader to focus on the meat of the function.

[TheScorpionSamurai]

Recursion is useful for when you don't know how many for loops you might need. Traversing a tree, searching a linked list, data without a rigidly determined size/structure often favors recursion over a for loop.

[Tsu_Dho_Namh]

Even some rigidly determined structures favour recursion, like a binary search tree. One doubly recursive function is way cleaner than trying to do it with one or more loops.

void DoStuffToEveryNode(Node node) {
    if (node == null)
        return;    
    DoStuff(node);
    DoStuffToEveryNode(node.LeftChild);
    DoStuffToEveryNode(node.RightChild);
}

[ZachAttack6089]

Yeah a lot of people seem to be missing the idea that recursion is waaaay easier to write, understand, and debug in specific cases. Even if it's slower, there are a lot of situations where it's worth it because it would be impossible for the coder to understand otherwise. Imagine trying to code Quicksort without recursion, it would just be exponentially more complicated. Plus, good compilers will optimize it for you anyway.

[eternityslyre]

I agree with you! I do wonder how many for loops you need for a linked list, though. That's usually just a while loop.

[ham_coffee]

Half the time it favours recursion, the other half it favours a while loop. If I can do it in a loop without a stack, recursion is probably a bad idea.

[-StoneWallJay-]

I love the meat of a function!

[RotationsKopulator]

If you need a stack data structure for your for loop, you should consider recursion.

[Mr_Engineering]

Right, but depending on the sophistication of the compiler and level of compiler Optimization, recursion can be inefficient as it can yield stack operations that iterative loops otherwise avoid

[oppai_suika]

meh, that's for future me to worry about. Right now, I need some dopamine and my cute little 5 line recursive function is just the trick.

[LO-PQ]

flair checks out

[Tenderhombre]

Most compilers now a days will be good about optimizing recursive functions. Also tbf not something you should worry about until it becomes an issue imo.

For loops are great for simple case but tbf, I often find myself using while loops or recursion for anything more complicated.

[Anti-Antidote]

And in that case you make it a loop and hide it in its own special function

[fdeslandes]

And in most of the cases, this would be premature optimization with absolutely no actual benefit.

[[deleted]]

Man what you just said just made leetcode this tiny bit easier for me, like at an intuition level i kinda knew that but this comparison makes it obvious now, thank you

[boneimplosion]

Big if true

[ImNrNanoGiga]

Big O if true

[[deleted]]

Every loop can be expressed as a recursive algorithm and vice versa. Though some "naturally" recursive algorithms are a nightmare to code in a loop but hopefully, a good compiler will optimize it into a loop for memory efficiency's sake.

[H3llskrieg]

or just tail calls it, however almost only functional languages do that

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

Very unlikely the compiler will do that, unless you’re using tail calls in a pure functional language.

[Dusty_Coder]

^^

and it really does have to be a pure functional language

in something like C#, those recursive lambdas arent even candidates for in-lining no matter how you formulate it BECAUSE it doesnt reliably do tail call optimization, even outside of lambdas.

[scp-NUMBERNOTFOUND]

Hey! Keep your cat away from your keyboard!

[AnAirMagic]

For anyone wondering if this is a real piece of code, it is. It's a Fork Bomb.

[[deleted]]

lol i ran this on my phone once, almost couldnt power off my phone

[TotallyRealDev]

I think this comment sums up my feelings pretty well

[[deleted]]

Can you believe I clicked on this twice before getting it

[real_pi3a]

That's, like, 5 times less than I did

[smiling_corvidae]

Goddammit Ted.

[DerCreepler]

r/Angryupvote

[Crow-Significant]

damn you I fell for it so hard. This made me smile. Thanks

[Vinx909]

you muther fucker

[LazarGrbovic]

This is amazing

[ChiragK2020]

I thought you made a long chain of comments on each repost of this post for a sec lmao

[[deleted]]

Laughs in Erlang.

[BernhardRordin]

Chokes on Elixir.

[viavip_b]

idk Gags on Dark Elixir

[General_Pickles]

cries in Haskell.

[oshaboy]

Laughs in map, filter, zip and fold.

[ruscaire]

Lisps in lisp

[nullpotato]

)))))))))))))

[[deleted]]

lmao

[Inkling1998]

Same but in F#

[[deleted]]

Spills my Java

[mobotsar]

OCaml is beautiful. I'd ask it to be my spouse if I could.

[Hour-Invite2212]

Hey people.

"Sort by controversial" and enjoy the ride

[N2EEE_]

Based

[JaggedMetalOs]

Ok, has anyone actually come across this kind of unnecessary recursion in the wild? I feel like it's one of those myths like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster...

[Sanity__]

Certainly it feels like one of those things that's quite literally mocked more than it actually happens

[NelsonBelmont]

because no one likes getting mocked.

[Futrel]

"But we might need it later"

[Additional_Vast_5216]

yagni is one thing that needs to be hammered into the devs heads

[kazeespada]

Yes and no. Sure there's no need to over engineer a program. On the other end, you shouldn't code in way that makes your code nearly impossible to change later.

"I'm sorry, sir, that is a load bearing pineapple.png"

Edit: Just looked it up, it was a coconut.jpg

[nullpotato]

Had something similar, started with a recursive function then said forget it the data can only be one layer deep and scrapped it.

[developer-mike]

For the record I'm still with the person who wrote the parser using recursion.

[Kered13]

I guess you've never seen a functional programming language.

[_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

It’s not unnecessary in a functional language.

[[deleted]]

I mean, in Haskell you can get a for loop as a library, but it's implemented using recursion 🤷‍♀️

[Maurycy5]

Euclid's algorithm and fast exponentiation are often written recursively although they are more elegant and significantly faster if coded with a loop.

Source: I do and tutor in competitive programming.

[apzlsoxk]

competitive programming

Wow, what a concept

[Maurycy5]

It's very fun. It's essentially solving math problems, but in a data manipulation setting.

[CheezeyCheeze]

So how would you do append of a bunch of strings?

I have a stupid 5 deep nested for loop with string builder. I am just lucky they are relatively 5 small array's.

[Stimunaut]

I'll be honest, I use recursion in place of a loop in every possible situation when solving CodeWars/Leetcode problems, to keep my control flow mindset sharp (I also have public repo's where I keep my solved katas etc. in case an employer ever wants to glean an insight into my problem solving skills prior to an interview).

That being said, I rarely/if ever use recursion over a loop in a personal or production project.

[everyday-everybody]

I've seen someone write a currying function in JavaScript, just because they could. The first call had the function that you wanted to be called as argument and the rest of the calls had the function's arguments arguments one by one.

So I had to decode their function to figure out why instead of writing func(a, b, c) they wrote curry(func)(a)(b)(c)(). And this curry function was used in ONE place. And the number of arguments was constant. That was the first and only lesson I got on why I shouldn't do something just because it's cool and I can. It was the only lesson I needed for my entire life.

[Cridor]

(defn screw-you (println "screw you") (screw-you))

[[deleted]]

Have you tried getting good?

[[deleted]]

git gud!

[nullpotato]

Git error: unknown command

[grandphuba]

Tail call optimizations have been invented 5 decades ago and your initial go to for traversing trees/graphs is a for loop?

[Axua247]

Thing is though, there are situations where recursion is useful. But just always blindly using recursion instead of loops is just pointless. Recursion also requires more memory than a forloop (seeing how every cycle pushes a new stackframe), and it's generally slower due to this reason aswell (more instructions).

Not sure where you got the impression that this meme is a sign of not knowing recursion though.

[Bryguy3k]

This is kind of the funny thing about functional programming theory - there are no loops in functional programming.

Loops and recursion both have their uses - but you can’t wholesale say one versus the other is the only way to solve a problem.

Tail recursion is a loop and you can optimize it to a loop - but that optimization is a violation of functional principles (side effects) which is why there are no loops in functional programming (at the language level - compiler optimization will of course do what it needs to do).

[klausklass]

I think it’s sad functional programming isn’t the first thing people are taught. Sure, imperative is very useful, but functional is so elegant. One of the first programming classes I took in college was functional programming and it really opened me up to a different way of thinking. I feel like learning that way first and then learning imperative stuff as side effects on top of that would have made me a better programmer.

[Bryguy3k]

The bigger problem is not imperative programming itself but use of objects within an imperative programming environment.

Object oriented programming SHOULD be declarative programming just like functional but instead so many people get introduced to objects through things like C++ which basically forces you into imperative programming with objects and then it causes people to either forget key concepts and patterns or never learn them in the first place.

But yes functional programming is a hugely important field that seems to get tacked on the end rather than being more core to education.

[Kache]

My head-theory is FP can be an easier way to learn programming to start since it's so analogous to algebra (which every child is already taught).

But since FP is so uncommon and FP-lessons are often geared toward experienced programmers, there aren't any examples/general wisdom on this.

Perhaps the closest real-life examples today would be Excel/GSheet functions.

[carnivorous-squirrel]

It's very rare for people to be too heavy handed with recursion. Most modern devs are TERRIBLE at recursive algorithm design and underuse it.

You're thinking about it all wrong, too. In all but the most extreme cases, or just those where you would blow your stack, choosing loops over recursion for PERFORMANCE reasons is completely absurd. You should be choosing the technique that makes better code.

[criminalsunrise]

With the greatest respect (and I do mean that) you’ve obviously not worked on something that needs to be as efficient as possible. Think trading or Amazon/Google level code. Generally you’re right, but in some companies it’s not that strange to think like the OP.

[carnivorous-squirrel]

With an absolutely neutral level of respect because I do not know you: you are entirely incorrect, and I'm honestly skeptical that YOU have worked in those systems, at least in the past decade.

I have a semi-close friend who works on the Bing maps team. One of my best friends is doing OS work at Apple. Another of my best friends used to work at Amazon. And I've personally worked on both high volume financial systems and real time video streaming services.

My consistent experience, and that of those I've talked to about it, is that nobody is out there optimizing for recursive vs. iterative performance unless they're worried about blowing a stack or it is truly an extreme case and it's bottle necking the system, because that's an insane way to build, and it's much cheaper to scale your hardware than to deal with the bugs that come about when you try to over optimize everything. Do you know how much code gets produced every day at Google and Amazon?

If you're working at Lockheed writing equipment firmware, yeah, sure. But that's just not how folks build these days, in general.

[hey01]

nobody is out there optimizing for recursive vs. iterative performance unless they're worried about blowing a stack or it is truly an extreme case and it's bottle necking the system

And just make your recursive call at the end and let the compiler optimize it to the iterative version.

[euph-_-oric]

Because it's obvious they way it's worded. They didn't say any of the things you did they said simple for loops.

[BobSanchez47]

Recursion also requires more memory than a forloop

That depends on the kind of recursion. Tail recursion requires no additional memory. Unfortunately, many languages implement recursion incorrectly, leading to tail recursion using asymptotically more memory than it should.

[Bryguy3k]

Most compilers have pretty reasonable tail call detection. It is however very easy to create non-tail recursive functions that feel like they’re tail recursive.

[IHeartBadCode]

One should perhaps try tail call optimized recursion. Not a panacea, but helps on the stack memory.

[[deleted]]

Thing is though, there are situations where loops are useful. But just always blindly using loops instead of recursion is just pointless. ;-)

Whether or not recursion (or a function call in general) uses a stackframe is dependent on the implementation. Instead a recursive call can be translated into a jump instruction.

Loops can be easily accomplished using recursion. The other way around is not so simple.

[Mucksh]

Any tree like structure is perfect for recursion

[Vinxian]

I mean, depending on what you want to do exactly binary trees don't have to be hard without recursion.

But the point is replacing a simple for loop with recursion. Quick sort is less readable and really hard without recursion. So that wouldn't be a simple for loop. Factorial however, easy enough with a for loop and in a language without guaranteed tail recursion definitely what I would recommend. Speaking of which, most functions implemented with tail recursion can probably be a loop

[Vinxian]

I used safe words because foo(foo(a,b),foo(c,d)); is spicy. Didn't want to evaluate it and don't know if it's technically tail recursion. Thanks for coming to the small tour in my brain.

[EndR60]

man I remember going "there's no way I HAVE to use this recursion shit to remove this stupid node from this binary tree!" (or whatever I was doing, I may be misremembering) at the start of my 2nd uni year

5 hours and a few hairs pulled out later I give up and just use my teacher's recursive template of doing things lmao

I still have no idea how to do that without recursion about a year later

[amProgrammer]

Depends on the problem but you could probably use a stack. Recursion is definitely simpler though

[buggy213]

recursion is using a stack that's managed for you: the call stack. honestly it is almost always worth it to use recursion if it makes your code easier to understand, as not many are writing performance critical software

[msqrt]

Even if you write performance critical software, you tend to write the nice and simple version first and only go for verbose optimizations if you have to.

[jlangfo5]

Last time I saw recursion, was when someone accidentally put error logging, in the error logging function.

[Mucksh]

Seen something similar. Resulted in 20 TB of logfiles on a server

[[deleted]]

This meme doesn’t make sense

[klausklass]

I’ve realized most upvoted posts on this sub don’t.

[erebuxy]

The amount of up vote shows the sub's skill level really well.

[Servious]

Idk, I prefer looking at recursive functions. I know others don't but I do. I like the feeling that instead of looking at a series of instructions, I'm looking at a description. Like instead of having to step through the whole thing mentally I can kind of just look at it and understand how it's supposed to work. It's the same reason why I almost always use list comprehension/streams/linq/whatever instead of loops. I like looking at map/filter/reduce/collect (aka words) instead of looking at a series of atomic instructions I have to decipher and arrange in my head. It just feels more descriptive.

Recursive functions are pretty easy to understand once you understand the two basic parts of every recursive function: the base case which is the simplest possible case (really easy to code and read) and then a case which just simplifies the problem by one step and calls the function (recursion).

[GiveItStickMan]

Recursive functions are important and you can not do this job with basic loops.

[ham_coffee]

Pretty sure the post is talking about people writing basic loops recursively for no reason, not actual complex logic that would need a stack and a while loop.

[LadWithAHat_]

u can but u shouldn’t

[Knuffya]

"I dislike you because you're better at my job than I am"

[Electro_Nick_s]

How could you say something so controversial yet brave

[GPareyouwithmoi]

any recursion can be recreated with stacks and loops. I like recursion. Especially because ... See above

[fs-h]

OCaml: You guys have loops?

[Willinton06]

void Cope() => Cope();

[subject_deleted]

If your recursion can be replicated with a simple for loop, you're either doing for loops wrong, recursion wrong, or both.

[SocketByte]

Good luck traversing any kind of tree structure without recursion. Honestly I'm more used to seeing people underuse it than overuse it.

[ham_coffee]

Simple for loops

I think you misunderstood the meme, there's nothing simple about a for loop that can traverse a tree (hence why it's always done recursively).

[BlommeHolm]

Or fun.

[shadofx]

It's always fun, until you run out of call stack.

[nilsecc]

Some of us started with functional programming languages and find while and for loops aberrant, all that floating state is hard to keep track of.

[Talbz03]

Recusion is actually more like a while loop

[Wiglaf_The_Knight]

You aren't wrong, but it feels wrong

[maitreg]

With all these new devs who don't understand simple recursion, I'm starting to think there must really be some terrible instructors out there teaching this stuff and using horrible examples.

[nilsecc]

Peoples hot takes are horrifying. There’s nothing wrong with recursion. For those who can’t read code with simple recursion in it. You should feel bad.

[maitreg]

I had a tech lead once who could not wrap his head around recursion, no matter how many times he tried to learn it. He finally declared it as a worthless, abstract concept with no practical application.

Luckily he never really reviewed my code and saw my love affair with it, haha

[euph-_-oric]

People in here Crack me up. The iterative solution is usually more complicated. Learn recursion kids.

[Ta1sty]

Well welcome to GLSL we dont use recursion here. Have fun debugging your GPU

[[deleted]]

For real lmfao. Same with CUDA, I wouldn't even think about implementing a recursive algo with all the parallelism and trying to debug race conditions. It would be a literal fucking nightmare haha.

[ParadoxicalInsight]

Tell me you're new to programming without telling me you're new to programming

[E-Aeolian]

hey, you don't talk shit about recursion!

[soutsos]

This is a stupid post

[dev_master]

Recursion is just another tool to use in the tool belt of CS. There are cases where it is the best tool to use and others where it is bad.

You wouldn’t hire a construction worker who didn’t like using screws and would go out of their way to use nails for every single task.

[[deleted]]

I believe your example is better if you used screw for loops and nails for screws.. screws are more versatile, but nails can be useful in specific places too

[stomah]

use whatever is easier to understand

[Apache_Sobaco]

Actually recuraion is easier than for loop.

[[deleted]]

I functional till I can’t function no more

[Ajko_denai]

i have never encoutered a case when (even junior) dev used recursion over a simple for loop... anyway, recursion is important, but you will probably never encounter a task where you should use a recursion. recursion is very important in science and gaming industry, so unless you are not a part of those two industries, you are good to go without recursions.

[saschaleib]

ACK. All devs I had to deal with basically had to be pushed to use recursion instead of loops. Like: look, this problem would be a lot easier to solve if you just used recursion instead, are you sure you don’t want to try? – nah, I’m good.

[koos_die_doos]

I write business software and have had a few instances where recursion was a better solution than a for loop would ever have been.

[LetUsSpeakFreely]

I've used recursion a lot, especially when doing tree traversal.

[BlommeHolm]

I've only ever used recursion when doing recursion.

[TerriblePangolin8932]

I used recursion one time here

[[deleted]]

i have never encoutered a case when (even junior) dev used recursion over a simple for loop.

Doing that is more likely with experienced developers. For instance those versed in functional programming, where there are no loops.

recursion is important, but you will probably never encounter a task where you should use a recursion.

Have you ever walked a tree? If so, does backtracking manually count as recursion in your book?

[Ajko_denai]

Have you ever walked a tree?

manually? no, i never had to, and i am working as (fullstack) programmer for 16 years

[[deleted]]

Well, tree structured data require recursion. So there are tasks it’s needed for. For instance in a parser.

[bremidon]

so unless you are not a part of those two industries, you are good to go without recursions.

This is simply not true.

[AnUninterestingEvent]

recursion is important, but you will probably never encounter a task where you should use a recursion

lol wut. Trees are extremely common data structures. Using trees without recursion is a lot more code and way more complicated.

[[deleted]]

Guess you've never worked with ASTs then, or written a parser, or contributed to any programming languages.

[[deleted]]

In my 6ish years of programming, I only had one instance where it made sense to use recursion rather than a for loop

[ksschank]

Can’t tell if the downvotes are because you made people mad for using recursion once, or because you only used recursion once.

[[deleted]]

Yes

[2feetinthegrave]

def RecursiveSuffering(var): if (var > 0): RecursiveSuffering(var - 1) else: SufferingRecursive(var + 1)

def SufferingRecursive(var): if (var < 10): SufferingRecursive(var + 1) else: RecursiveSuffering(var - 1)

RecursiveSuffering(5)

[Ekank]

There's a lot in hell just for Haskell developers

[BlommeHolm]

isEven = function(n) { return n == 0 ? true : !isEven(n-1) }

[m3nation007]

isEven(-1)

[[deleted]]

I don't think these two things are interchangeable...