Recursive functions...

It was a déjà vu moment...when my niece told me how she was trying to memorise a program to print out the n'th Fibonacci number, in preparation for her practical exams.
Rewind to my late teens, the age of learning complex computer logic such as recursive functions. And the first (and probably the most common) program to test your recursive function concepts and skills was generating the Fibonacci sequence. It was easier to memorise the program that ran into not more than 10 lines than wasting time understanding a logic that there would be lots of time to understand later in life! Those were the days when shortcuts could be taken without any guilt :)
At that time, little did I realise that I would understand the concept of recursive functions under very adverse conditions in a corporate setting a couple of years down the line :)
Coming back to the present, with an undisguised glee I explained the concept of recursive functions with examples to my niece, silently patting myself on the back. Maybe that is what growing old is - when you stop enjoying the simple joy of memorising a program to clear the impending practicals and instead, try to understand it, so that you can write those kind of things for the rest of your life!  

1 comment:

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