Subject: Re: Midfunction Recursion
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 23 Oct 2002 16:41:00 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3244380060687859@naggum.no>

* Travis Whitton
| Well... I'm teaching myself, so I guess it's my own fault.

  Damn.  I really thought I had something I could whack the Scheme freaks
  with this time.

| I have been programming imperatively for a good while, and I've always
| avoided recursion mainly because I found it confusing.

  Do you find function calls confusing?  Why?

| I've never tried Scheme (I like fast languages),

  I see.  This tells me that you are too quick to judge and do not pay
  attention to the details that would encourage you to look for better
  conclusions after the first one you reached has failed to produce the
  expected or desired results.

| Maybe it's the nature of functional programming that just as you feel
| everything is starting to click, you're back at square one...

  No, that would only be the nature of not getting the point.

  You need to become more comfortable with not understanding something
  before you can learn it well enough to understand it.  There is a very
  strong sense of rushing to conclusions in the way you speak of your
  problems and your approaches to learning something.  Acquire patience.

-- 
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.