News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Reconsidering the way I explain programming (2020). Parent comment

Re:Reconsidering the way I explain programming (2020) by rdaystrom on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @10:54PM (#27979833)
I try to avoid recursion, I don't want to blow out the stack.

Personally I think it should not be used for implementation, I consider it to be a security risk. It's ok for high-level pseudocode.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reconsidering the way I explain programming (2020) by siraben on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @11:54PM (#27980106)
This isn't true if your language does tail-call optimization[0].

> I consider it to be a security risk.

Again, non-issue if your language handles recursion properly (and in some languages like Haskell, "blowing the stack" is not a thing that happens).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail_call#Implementation_metho...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reconsidering the way I explain programming (2020) by nights192 on Wednesday July 28, 2021 @12:41AM (#27980309)
I believe he's more concerned about issues where tail-calls aren't possible or attractive.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reconsidering the way I explain programming (2020) by macintux on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @11:00PM (#27979853)
It depends on the language. Many good languages are designed to handle recursion safely.

For some, it’s practically the only way to loop.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reconsidering the way I explain programming (2020) by waynesonfire on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @11:59PM (#27980125)
Looks like you learned something new. You now also have a guage to measure the sophistication of a programming language. Ask if it supports tail call optimization and move on if the answer is no.
[ Parent | on HN ]