My cousin the gamer explained recursion to me and I finally got it

I was over at my cousin's place last Saturday helping him set up a new desk. He's a computer science student, and I mentioned I was trying to learn Python on the side. He just said "recursion is like opening a set of Russian dolls, but the last one has a mirror instead of another doll." That specific example stuck in my head because it made the whole repeating function thing click. Has anyone else had a random analogy that just unlocked a coding concept for them?

2 comments

2 Comments

johnfoster6d ago

Guess Russian nesting dolls are way more useful than I thought, I just use 'em for storing spare change.

jennifer_west6d ago

Remember they were originally teaching tools for counting and sorting in Russian schools.

-1