Self function

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 04 May 2009 15:51:15 -0700, Carl Banks wrote:

> All
> recursion does it make what you're doing a lot less readable for almost
> all programmers.

What nonsense. There are many algorithms that are more understandable 
written recursively than iteratively -- consult any good text book for 
examples. There are algorithms that are naturally iterative, and 
algorithms which are naturally recursive (and a few which are equally 
simple either way), and forcing either one into the other form leads to 
complicated and confusing code. This especially holds for mutually-
recursive functions, where re-writing them to be iterative is usually 
very difficult.

Sometimes it's worth rewriting a recursive algorithm to be iterative for 
the performance optimization, but that comes at the price of reduced 
readability.



-- 
Steven