A stranger in a coffee shop broke down recursion for me in 3 minutes

I was stuck on this recursion exercise for like 4 days. Every tutorial I watched just made it worse. Then I'm sitting in this little coffee place near the library, staring at my laptop, and this older guy next to me asks if I'm okay. I showed him the code and he just said "think of it like nesting dolls, you open one, do a tiny thing, then open the next until you hit the smallest one, then close them all back up." He drew it on a napkin with a number countdown. Something about seeing it visually with actual steps just clicked. I finished the problem that night. Has anyone else had a random stranger or even a coworker explain something way better than any course or book could? I swear the best teaching I've gotten has been from people who aren't trying to teach.

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the_henry1mo ago

Had a similar thing happen to me back in 2016 with pointers in C. Was stuck for a week, then this guy at a bus stop who was a retired electrical engineer drew me a diagram on a napkin showing memory addresses as houses with numbers on them. It clicked instantly. Books and courses have to cover so many edge cases and formal definitions that they end up overcomplicating stuff. A person who's just explaining from their own brain skips all that noise and gives you the core idea. The other thing is they don't have any agenda, they're not trying to sell you a course or prove they're smart. That takes the pressure off and makes it easier to ask dumb questions. My rule now is if I'm stuck on something for more than two days, I find a person instead of another tutorial.

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