Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!ncar!oddjob!mimsy!chris
From: chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Basics of Program Design
Message-ID: <12448@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jul 88 13:36:52 GMT
References: <901@td2cad.intel.com> <3061@rpp386.UUCP> <395@proxftl.UUCP> <464@proxftl.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 18

In an article whose referent is missing (what weird news software *are*
they running at proxftl anyway? :-) ), someone writes:
>>It has been mentioned that it is hard to
>>debug with a tail-recursion optimizing compiler. I disagree and I use
>>one every day.

In article <464@proxftl.UUCP> bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells) writes:
>I too thought that objection was silly.

I was the one who said `harder to debug'.  Note: hard*er*, not *hard*.
I think both of you will agree that it takes a moment's thought to
first decide that even though there is only one occurrence of some
recursive function on the stack trace, you may not be in the first
level of recursion, and then to find out how deep you really are.  (On
the other hand, I suppose it can be argued that hundreds of screenfuls
of nested calls can be rather overwhelming.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 7163)
Domain:	chris@mimsy.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris