[Edu-sig] understanding recursion

[Dethe Elza]

Here's my 0.02.  Take with a grain of salt, I've been feverish with  
the flu the last couple of days

When the issue comes up, why not step away from the computers and  
simply draw a stack on the whiteboard?  Show how looping stays at the  
same place in the stack and recursion will eventually overflow the  
stack. They don't have to understand all the details of why (or why  
recursion doesn't have that effect in all languages), but a simple  
picture should give them enough to know why to avoid one over the other.

--Dethe

"The Brazilian government is definitely pro-law. But if law doesn't  
fit reality anymore, law has to be changed. That's not a new thing.  
That's civilisation as usual." --Gilberto Gil, Brazilian Minister of  
Culture