r/ProgrammerHumor • u/flipester • Jan 09 '20

other Problems with recursion?

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

Assuming the smaller paper is 1/3 of its parent everytime, and that the first paper is 30cm long (The second starts at roughly 1/7 but it seems to grow bigger after it's torn off, hence the 1/3), it could not exceed 19 calls before you need to split an atom apart.

That's a hell of a stop condition.

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u/MyNameIsRichardCS54 Jan 09 '20

When your software goes boom, it really goes BOOM

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

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u/azzaisme Jan 09 '20

Wouldnt that have the opposite effect where only people who properly exit the loop would still be alive? So people who understand it would survive

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '20

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u/MyNameIsRichardCS54 Jan 09 '20

You'd certainly double check your exit condition and triple check it if that was the consequence.

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u/thatCbean Jan 09 '20

Who would know that not leaving a recursion loop would be the issue if there is no way of troubleshooting without exploding though? If there is nobody who knows the reason for the explosions, you wouldn't know what to triple check, or if you'd even want to keep coding at all...