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[DragonDePlatino]

Meanwhile, today I had my Python lab (the prerequisite to Java but I'm able to take both).

"Write a function to find the length of a string! No, you can't use len(string) because we haven't learned that yet. Now write a function to reverse a string! No, you can't just return string[::-1] because we haven't learned that index notation yet. No, you can't use a while loop because we haven't learned that. No, you can't use try-except blocks for your error handling. No, you can't-"

AUUUUUGH! I feel like I'm going to come unglued! Why do I have to take this class?!? Why does the American education system charge you to take these classes when you could just skip them?

[itisnotlogical]

Remember: in Python there's always exactly one way to do something except when there's not.

[TheBiggerFish]

Meanwhile, today I had my Python lab (the prerequisite to Java but I'm able to take both).

"Write a function to find the length of a string! No, you can't use len(string) because we haven't learned that yet. Now write a function to reverse a string! No, you can't just return string[::-1] because we haven't learned that index notation yet. No, you can't use a while loop because we haven't learned that. No, you can't use try-except blocks for your error handling. No, you can't-"

AUUUUUGH! I feel like I'm going to come unglued! Why do I have to take this class?!? Why does the American education system charge you to take these classes when you could just skip them?

*cringe intensifies*

Aie ye ye.

[Antsan]

Tail recursion is awesome. Some code just looks better as a tail recursion than it does as a loop. Also recursion is easier than loops when trying to avoid destructive updates, because you need the original structure to stay as it is.

They want you to learn specific algorithms so that you know how they work. That one actually makes sense. I still learned how an adder works and had to implement it (in a program for simulating circuitry).

In regards to "learn it when you need it": That's bunk. You mostly won't find out that you need it when you don't know it – instead you're going to work around your lack of knowledge, doing everything the hard way, only because you don't know enough to even realize that there is an easier way in the first place.
Using Python to learn Computer Science seems like a bad idea when I look at this discussion. "I don't need to learn this – somebody else already did this for me!" isn't really a healthy attitude towards programming. Yep, you don't need to implement it yourself, but knowing how it works is necessary either way. `string[::-1]` basically looks like magic and doesn't tell you anything about the algorithm. That's why you shouldn't use it when you're learning how reversing a string actually works.

[Putnam]

In regards to "learn it when you need it": That's bunk. You mostly won't find out that you need it when you don't know it – instead you're going to work around your lack of knowledge, doing everything the hard way, only because you don't know enough to even realize that there is an easier way in the first place.

this link will explain my entire learning experience

lmao it's actually a bit embarrassing

i'm not joking this is the only thing i'm actually, like, embarrassed about

EDIT: Actually, looking at those results, I'm kind of horrified that the second one is the first to tell you "don't do that, you almost definitely want an array".

[EnigmaticHat]

I taught myself to program before going to college.

The first code I saw horrified me, lmao. Instead of the example code using VB's "sleep" function, it used... a for loop that loops ~10,000,000 times to do nothing to simulate a wait. I looked at that, recoiled in horror, replaced it with a proper sleep, then turned it in, heh.

The teachers at my school are very fine with me actually keeping good habits up despite instructions, though... as long as the code passes all their tests, it's fine, I guess.

Not that I'm seriously considering this as valid code, but... wouldn't that be massively dependent on processing speed?

[Putnam]

College computers are all the same anyway.

[itisnotlogical]

I taught myself how to program mostly by learning to create games. It's not a bad idea in theory, but I feel like there's some pretty huge gaps in my overall knowledge of programming as a result. not the least of which because I hate using raw graphics libraries and just prefer to use game engines like Unity or UDK.

[DragonDePlatino]

In regards to "learn it when you need it": That's bunk. You mostly won't find out that you need it when you don't know it – instead you're going to work around your lack of knowledge, doing everything the hard way, only because you don't know enough to even realize that there is an easier way in the first place.

Then what would you recommend I do...I can't learn my entire programming language (C++, primarily SFML) before I start to make anything. That's like expecting me to learn the entire English language before I say anything. I can't seek out and learn things before I even know what I'm looking for.

As an example, take game architecture. For a while, I took an object-inheritance approach and discovered all of the problems that go with that. I then Googled a better way to structure things, and now I'm using a data-driven Entity Component System. I had a gut feeling that object inheritance was "doing everything the hard way" but I knew to seek out help online if I started having trouble with an approach. The difficulty of using object-inheritance served as motivation for learning a better way of doing things. It's not the *best* way of learning programming but I think it's sufficient as long as you end up with fast, concise code.

[Antsan]

Then what would you recommend I do...I can't learn my entire programming language (C++, primarily SFML) before I start to make anything. That's like expecting me to learn the entire English language before I say anything. I can't seek out and learn things before I even know what I'm looking for.

I didn't say you should learn everything before starting programming, I said you shouldn't wait to learn things until you need them.

The intention was to teach recursion by forcing us to use it instead of iteration. It's frustrating, I feel it's teaching us Java students a very bad approach to an otherwise simple problem. In the few months of C++ experience I taught myself, I never had to use recursion. For better or worse, I'm a strong advocate of "learn it as you need it" when it comes to programming. The general consensus online seems to be "Use recursion when its faster/more intuitive than iteration" and I fully intend to hold off recursion until I hit a problem like that.

Here you were complaining about having to learn recursion. How do you intend to understand when recursion is going to be faster than iteration if you haven't learned the theory behind recursion yet? Have you even learned about complexity calculations? Do you intend to wait to learn those until one of your programs locks up your computer?

Recursion is not some kind of highly specialized, complex corner case of programming, it's one of the most important concepts to understand, no matter whether you actually use it or not. It's not about usage but understanding and habit.
If you're in the middle of some complex task you do not want to pause and seek out a tutorial about reactive programming, regular expressions or pushdown automata and you certainly don't want to fight through a whole book's worth of theory to understand the trappings and applications beyond what writers of tutorials considered.

What I recommend? Put aside half an hour a day, or maybe an hour a week, or whatever you feel doesn't infringe on your time too much and use that time to seek out and learn programming concepts you don't know yet.

[LoSboccacc]

uh do you have any example of recursive code being faster than iterative? afaik pushing the call stack is slow af and every recursion unrolled with a fake stack backed by an actual array is gonna be faster

[Antsan]

That might as well be. Only that writing an iterative quicksort is an exercise that is mostly going to leave you exhausted and distraught, with a severe wish to write bubble sort instead, and then recursive Quicksort is faster again.
Same for Mergesort.

Programming for speed when speed isn't crucial is a bad idea either way. Program for clarity and optimize for speed only when it becomes an issue. Recursion is often much clearer than iteration, especially since it is declarative instead of instructive. Finding a fast algorithm can sometimes be easier with recursion than with iteration.

[DragonDePlatino]

Here you were complaining about having to learn recursion. How do you intend to understand when recursion is going to be faster than iteration if you haven't learned the theory behind recursion yet? Have you even learned about complexity calculations? Do you intend to wait to learn those until one of your programs locks up your computer?

Yes. When I start writing programs large enough to need optimization, that's when I intend to learn complexity calculations. I frequently read the documentation at cplusplus.com so I already have a vague idea of how complexity works and why its useful. Same goes for recursion. If I ever come up with some sort of a tree-based structure I need to traverse, that's when I'm going to seriously learn and use recursion. I was frustrated with my classes because they're forcing us to use recursion in cases where when iteration is more intuitive. I wish they would've held off on teaching it until we had a good reason to use it.

If you're in the middle of some complex task you do not want to pause and seek out a tutorial about reactive programming, regular expressions or pushdown automata and you certainly don't want to fight through a whole book's worth of theory to understand the trappings and applications beyond what writers of tutorials considered.

Admittedly, when I talk about "learn it as you need it" I'm talking about hobby programming as opposed to professional programming. In a job setting, I absolutely would need to have a strong foundation in the entirety of C++ before I could work with others. Right now, I'm just programming a game in my free time so I don't mind pausing to pour through a tutorial for a few hours. Like I said, it's not the *best* way of learning programming.

What I recommend? Put aside half an hour a day, or maybe an hour a week, or whatever you feel doesn't infringe on your time too much and use that time to seek out and learn programming concepts you don't know yet.

I'm absolutely open to the idea of doing this even for several hours a day. The other day I read a fun article on beginner's A* pathfinding. Heck, you could probably even use recursion to traverse the parent nodes back to the beginning. The problem is, I don't know how to seek out new programming concepts if I don't know what I'm even looking for. ^^;

[alexandertnt]

I find recursion to be an invaluable tool for solving problems in general. It can often produce clear, simple to understand solutions, even if they are sometimes not very efficient for the computer to process. Turning these solutions into an iterative version is usually pretty straight forward anyway.

[EnigmaticHat]

From what I've seen my amateur game development dabbling, recursion is sometimes a better solution but its almost never the only solution.  99.9% of the time there's nothing you could do with recursion that you couldn't do with a wrapper function, or a single function with one or more loops.  In fact I'm thinking and I can't think of anything that would straight up require recursion.

I too am a big fan of learn it as you need it.  For unpaid work obviously... although from what I've seen of stack exchange, I suspect that some professionals also are learning it as they need it.  I dunno, my first programming project that got off the ground was a huge, bloated, inefficient mess and it was one of the best learning experiences I've ever had.  I mean for fuck's sake, you're posting on a forum that once hosted discussion of the first Armok game.  If that's not an example of learning by doing I don't know what is.