Comments on: Pass that Interview 2: Understanding Recursion

By: Don Hosek

Don Hosek — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 02:54:54 +0000

It often surprised me during interviews how few people could write this function. I can understand the software autodidacts (although being one myself, perhaps not), but too many people who had actual degrees in computer science were stymied by the whole idea.

By: Brian Crescimanno

Brian Crescimanno — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:14:46 +0000

nice catch–fixed.

By: robbarry

robbarry — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:00:24 +0000

Your factorial function returns fact(0) = 0, which is wrong.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0!

How's that for too much time on my hands?

By: Rob Barry

Rob Barry — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 23:26:14 +0000

Stickler point of order: your factorial function returns fact(0) = 0. But 0! = 1.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0!

Yes, I’m that guy.

By: cyu

cyu — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:26:30 +0000

Any interview question that asks for the cons of something should also ask for the pros. So what are the pros of using recursion? It can't be all bad, can it?

By: MIchael Merrell

MIchael Merrell — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 01:29:31 +0000

Good Post.
I know that when I was interviewing people one of the code samples I had was a recursive function, it's purpose of course being people who could at least read through what it was doing. It was surprising what percentage of the people I interviewed with did not understand it.
Once I began to more fully understand recursion I felt like I had gone over a milestone in my programming knowledge, and in fact I had.

Just remember the first step in defining recursion is to define recursion.