Grokking Algorithms, Second Edition

3 Recursion

In this chapter

• You learn about recursion. Recursion is a coding technique used in many algorithms. It’s a building block for understanding later chapters in this book.
• You learn what a base case and a recursive case is. The divide-and-conquer strategy (chapter 4) uses this simple concept to solve hard problems.

I’m excited about this chapter because it covers recursion, an elegant way to solve problems. Recursion is one of my favorite topics, but it’s divisive. People either love it or hate it—or hate it until they learn to love it a few years later. I personally was in that third camp. To make things easier for you, I have some advice:

• This chapter has a lot of code examples. Run the code for yourself to see how it works.