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It is a syntax error to write FORTRAN while not wearing a blue tie. It would be an error to write a technical book and to leave that joke out. The less funny variant of this joke, which is too simple to raise more than 1 out of 7 on the chucklemeter, is to have an index entry which simply states:īut it's so simple a joke that no technical book is complete without it. This is particularly funny because you know that the page number is not known at the time of writing, so it involves arduous toil and communication on the part of author and printer.Īt this point, it's not so much a 'joke' as a 'convention'.

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On the plus side, it is a joke about unbounded recursion, so it is at least a little bit funny.Īs far as standard recursion jokes go, they don't get more standard than the practice of having an index entry at the back of a printed book which says 'Recursion, ' where the index entry itself is on page 251. This is too simple to be particularly funny. To understand recursion you must first understand recursion. The standard recursion joke is any variation on the following: Sadly, you may find that it takes much longer than you anticipated. You might hope that this section (Jokes about Unbounded recursion) will be a quick read. This is not connected to the Tortoise Hare Algorithm which is useful for finding cycles in referential data structures. 'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the old lady. Giant tortoise.' The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise standing on?' The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a Up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got Heĭescribed how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vastĬollection of stars called our galaxy. Most people, self included, have read about as far as this quote and no further.Ī well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy.

This quote is in the first few pages of 'A brief history of time,' a book which is one of the most widely purchased‐but rarely read-books in history. The song that doesn't end Turtles all the way down. This category is incomplete without mentioning the extremely annoying 'song that doesn't end' from the show Lamp Chop. His son will presumably be named Yon Yonson and so on. Yon Yonson, so named as Yon is the son of Yon. 'My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconson. The street, They say, 'What is your name?' And I say My name is Yon Yonson, I work in Wisconsin, I work inĪ lumbermill there. while this variation is pleasing to any fans of fractal formations:Įarly in 'Slaughterhouse 5' we're introduced to the infinitely recursive song of Yon Yonson: The seldom used second verse is not quite so good: though I fail to see how such a verse could ever help a child be lulled into sleep, it's more likely to leads to Invisible Biting Bug Syndrome, which cannot be fun. The best nursery rhyme on the topic of infinite regress is clearly 'The Siphonaptera' The joke is only effective because of the convoluted nature of the recursion: the loop back takes 18 verses, or 9 steps, far more than our short term memory can readily hold. The repair itself ultimately requires use of a bucket. The nursery rhyme there's a hole in my bucket is centered on an unbounded recursion that arises when attempting to repair a leaky bucket. Unbounded Recursion in Children's Nursery Rhymes They will continue to walk on such a path, over and over, until they literally die of exhaustion and starvation. If somehow the trail gets looped onto itself, then the ants can begin to follow an endless loop.

They also leave their own chemical trail, to help the army ants behind them to follow the same trail they are on. Soldier ants are blind, and they follow the chemical trails (pheromone, scent) left by other ants. Unbounded recursion is not just something that can cause your computer to crash or your programs to freeze. There is no general method to determine whether a given program will ever halt or will run forever this is the undecidability of the halting problem. (Alternatively see Recursion where you can learn about applying bounds to your recursion, or detecting cycles in referential data structures)