Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!goblin3!goblin.stu.neva.ru!newsfeed3.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!uio.no!nntp.uib.no!svn.schaathun.net!not-for-mail From: Hans Georg Schaathun Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: Fibonacci series recursion error Date: Mon, 2 May 2011 21:02:43 +0100 Organization: University of Bergen Lines: 31 Message-ID: <38f398-14h.ln1@svn.schaathun.net> References: <87iptw1egh.fsf@rudin.co.uk> <87ei4k0ygz.fsf@rudin.co.uk> <87aaf7246f.fsf@rudin.co.uk> <4dbd221a$0$29991$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> <4dbedec0$0$29991$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: vannskorpion.bccs.uib.no X-Trace: toralf.uib.no 1304366258 122 129.177.20.20 (2 May 2011 19:57:38 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@uib.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 2 May 2011 19:57:38 GMT User-Agent: slrn/pre1.0.0-18 (Linux) Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.python:4497 On 02 May 2011 16:41:37 GMT, Steven D'Aprano wrote: : You must be new to the Internet then :) OK. Maybe I heard something worse last time I was an active news users, years ago. Anyway, most of the silly things I hear do not qualify as arguments :-) : The problem is, once you include side-effects, recursion and iteration : are *not* identical. Specifically, the opposition to tail-recursion : optimization in Python is that it plays havoc with the tracebacks you get : in the event of an exception. The argument goes: Thanks for the comprehensive background. I can see the point that python may be harder to optimise correctly during compilation than many other languages. : Regardless of whether you agree with the arguments or not, they're hardly : "silly". I only called one argument silly, namely the one about iterative rewriting being so simple that it is not an issue. Sometimes it isn't, but sometimes it is. The other arguments are valid. And they make me lean more towards more static, compiled languages without the excessive run-time dynamism of python. -- :-- Hans Georg