search

data-centric-computing / dcic-public

Repository for (for now) filing bug reports about DCIC.
19 stars 2 forks source link

[DCIC Book]: point out new kind of recursion, and notional machine #37

Open shriram opened 2 years ago

shriram commented 2 years ago

Contact Details

shriram@gmail.com

Which Web page are you commenting on?

https://dcic-world.org/2022-01-25/processing-lists.html#%28part._uniq%29

What's your suggestion?

On Discord, "batman is dead" points out that uniq-rec2 introduces a "new kind of recursion", in that there is work to be done after the recursive call. This may not be strictly true (if they've seen tree-recursion before), but it's probably pretty close to true, and anyway, it may be the first truly non-trivial local continuation. They did not know that the computer "remembers" what is left to be done.

This seems like a very important teachable moment using a notional machine.

kfisler commented 1 year ago

Deferring for this weekend, as it raises the question of when contexts are explicitly discussed as part of our notional machines. They aren't currently there, and your teachable moment needs them. Will think about how to bring this in properly.