Challenges of recursion
When using recursion in programming, two main challenges often arise: the risk of stack overflow and the considerations for performance. Let’s dive into these challenges with our characters.
As Steve began implementing recursive functions in his game, he ran into some issues.
Steve: Julia, I’m getting stack overflow errors when I have too many nested waves. What’s going on?
Julia: Ah, you’ve discovered one of the challenges of recursion. Let’s talk about stack overflow risk and how to mitigate it.
Stack overflow risk
A stack overflow occurs when there’s too much information to store in the call stack—the part of memory that tracks where each function is in its execution. This can happen if a recursive function calls itself too many times without reaching a base case.
For example, when counting the total number of videos in all categories and subcategories, if the hierarchy is very deep or there...
