this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Programmer Humor

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Bye bye stack was nice knowing you.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It's ok, the stack overflow is the exit condition.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago
  File "<python-input-0>", line 2, in a
    a()
    ~^^
  [Previous line repeated 988 more times]
RecursionError: maximum recursion depth exceeded
[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

the non-recursive part of this image is mildlyinfuriating

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

That's the static variable in the function sticking around and watching the madness unfold.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

That's hilarious, reminds me of this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Well played 👏👏

I guess I just got, recurse rolled?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Wait, is it possible to create a real infinite droste effect with vector graphics since they aren’t limited by resolution?

As long as you can do recursion in the xml it should be possible to make an svg that’s “infinitely” recursive yes?

(I have no experience on this topic)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Depends on how the format represents the image. My impression is that it's in a way that's implicitly limited to smooth (so definitely not fractal) curves.

You're never going to fit infinite detail in finite information, of course. At best you can loop through the finite information.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Would it be an infinite file then? I guess unless you restrain the max file size. But as you're zooming in, it will keep making more microscopic image, it's kind of like a function that keeps approaching x value yet never reached it.

My brain hurts

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Well the svg file itself wouldn’t be, but whatever tries to render the image might think the file is infinite since it’d loop around forever. Come to think of it, I’d imaging there are probably safeguards in place to prevent svg files like this hypothetical one from being opened because they’d run as an infinite loop

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Even better when instead of recursive function calls, it a recursive process fork!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago

Knock knock!

Race Condition!

Who's there?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Even better:

Before forking locally, fork it on another machine!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Insert evil laugh here

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

My exit condition is when the stack overflows

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

I'm reminded of Matt Parker demonstrating recursion in Microsoft PowerPoint:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Fa6HtvGtQ

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Nope, stolen from a Telegram group chat, not sure where it's originally from.