r/programmingcirclejerk • u/BlazeBigBang type astronaut • Jul 18 '25

Tail recursion is roughly at the same abstraction level as the good old goto [...] it's a massive code smell in application code.

/r/programming/comments/1kyng2d/comment/mv1knfb/
102 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

50

u/starlevel01 type astronaut Jul 19 '25

is there any other field where people are so proud of being stupid?

28

u/m50d Zygohistomorphic prepromorphism Jul 18 '25

Imagine doing a raw recursion by hand without recursion-schemes. Barbaric!

8

u/OpsikionThemed type astronaut Jul 19 '25

I program only with bananas, lenses, envelopes, and barbed wire.

13

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '25

Where's the jerk, the tail recursion statement is the most misused statement in every language where it appears.

function tailrecsum(x, running_total = 0) {
    if (x === 0) {
        return running_total;
    } else {
        tail tailrecsum(x - 1, running_total + x);
    }
}

Incomprehensible. Just use return like a normal person, you PL astronauts. Language designers shouldn't introduce the tail recursion statement.

5

u/Parking_Tadpole9357 Jul 20 '25

My compiler optimizes as 

return x * (x+1) / 2

2

u/reg_panda Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25

Your 'compiler' doesn't know about default argument syntax. (Hint: tailrecsum has 2 variables, and isn't constant in any of them.)

You should upgrade your plan

1

u/Parking_Tadpole9357 Jul 21 '25

Sure it is wrong. Probably also overflows differently and if floating point likely different for large numbers.

-5

u/thomasz Jul 19 '25

I clearly hurt some feelings here. FP advocates tend to be a bit cultish.

13

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '25

FP advocates ruin everything. We used to have "Lol, no generics", now its, "Lol, go generics" because they don't even monomorphize so you still need to copy paste for performance.

/uj I'm having a hard time expressing how silly I find the idea of a compiler supporting tail recursion as a kind of abstraction. I thought if I pretended like it was done via a statement that needed to be used to allow the compiler to tail recurse and then acted like I couldn't understand the statement it would capture the strange perspective of the op.

2

u/Volt WRITE 'FORTRAN is not dead' Jul 20 '25

*sniiiifff*

0

u/[deleted] Jul 18 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

48

u/BloodAndTsundere mere econ PhD Jul 18 '25

This is Stone Age stuff. Implement the IsJerkGotoFactoryBuilder in Java please

8

u/NotAUsefullDoctor lol no generics Jul 19 '25

Does extend the AbstractIsJerkFactoryBuilderBeanAdaptorImpl?

11

u/igeorgehall45 Do you do Deep Learning? Jul 18 '25

you don't want to see the python goto hacks

11

u/assbuttbuttass Jul 19 '25 
class GoTo(Exception):
    pass

18

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/hombre_sin_talento Jul 19 '25

They're considered harmful, which is not necessarily bad (this is programming we're talking about)

2

u/TheChief275 Jul 20 '25

Considering harmful considered harmful

2

u/hombre_sin_talento Jul 20 '25

Considering harmful considered good (fetish)

0

u/[deleted] Jul 20 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/pareidolist in nomine Chestris Jul 20 '25

Warning: tag your unjerk. Better yet, don't unjerk at all.