Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderIt was hard for a moment to get my head around the idea of static activation records. That makes “procedure call” simply into a goto. I guess I tend to write assembly code this way though. Ironic that almost 20 years later the idea of dynamic activation had been so well absorbed that it was possible to write an influential paper all about how procedure call (and lambda) could be considered a goto (via tail recursion)!
I've encountered knee-jerk negative reactions to recursion from most firmware engineers. Then one day I got one to laugh at this byte-saving routine to do some multiplications: X32: BSR X16 X16: BSR X8 X8: BSR X4 X4: BSR X2 X2: ADD A RET Recursion. In assembly language. We were six bytes shy of filling our code space, but we had gobs of stack, and I got about 60 bytes back from our stupid compiler with this. When my cow-orker saw…
https://www.ics.uci.edu/~jajones/INF102-S18/readings/07_dijk... - Also relevant. An early (earliest?) description of a call stack and using it to hold activation records (stack frames as they're commonly called today).
Recursion is induction, aka basic maths.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 271
- Total comments
- 180
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-08-27 | How recursion got into Algol 60: a comedy of errorsFirst breakout | sytelus | 103 | 124 |
| 2017-10-28 | How recursion got into programming: a tale of intrigue, betrayal, and semantics | striking | 1 | 0 |
| 2019-06-28 | How Recursion Got into Programming | tosh | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-05-01 | Recursion Got into Programming (2014) | fpoling | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-05-03 | How Recursion Got into Programming (2014)Hall induction · Best thread | headalgorithm | 127 | 47 |
| 2021-11-30 | Recursion Got into Programming | anooh | 3 | 0 |
| 2022-10-07 | Recursion got into programming: intrigue, betrayal, and advanced semanticsLatest 20+ point return | ahupp | 32 | 8 |
| 2024-04-03 | How recursion got into programming: a tale of intrigue, betrayal and .... (2014) | ksec | 1 | 1 |