I regretted choosing “recursion” to define. While it’s a commonly used word in computer science, it’s a term that can be hard to explain without practical experience. When I first learnt how to solve problems using recursion, it took a long time for the process to click. If you were to visualize a recursive problem, it would look like a picture within a picture. It can be a bit of a trippy situation.

I’ve always felt that I can understand something better if I explain the topic to someone else. I believe that the process of writing a beginner friendly definition for recursion has helped cement my understanding of the topic. When Harsha said she was able to understand the definition I was very happy!  I also understand why she still had confusion regarding my second example of recursion involving Fibonacci’s sequence.

Fibonacci’s sequence is commonly used in computer science teachings, but I forgot that it isn’t common knowledge. With Harsha’s help I started to take a step back from the definition and kept asking myself “Would I understand this without any computer science education?”. When you’re surrounded by people with the same knowledge as you, it’s easy to forget that not everyone knows the same thing.

I hope with the edits and further elaboration on the topic make the expanded definition even easier to understand.