Super-dee-duper D features

[Lutger]

Pragma wrote:
> One nit: I agree with Walter here.  People do *not* "naturally think
> recursively".  Computer Scientists, most
> definitely. Developers, likely.  People who make Russian dolls for a
> living, perhaps.  Normal people, not a chance.  I'd argue that most folks
> can't even spell the word, much less know what it means.
> 
> Proof?  Well, how many people go about defining things in terms of the
> very things they're trying to define?
>

I'm not sure this is true. Many simple tasks are described as 'do X to Y
until Z,' which can be expressed easily as a recursive procedure. I doubt
non-programmers would think of a task as iterating over a collection of
objects with mutable state either. :)

Sometimes I get the feeling that recursion is made out to be more difficult
than it is, for programming I mean. As an average Joe I do like to learn
more, but when you look up material on the use of recursion, the vast bulk
of it pretty much assumes you at least have a pretty good programming
knowledge and often require mathematics too. </rant>

Recursion just has a nerdy aura around it. It probably doesn't help that
most programmers are learned to think iteratively too.