Entries published on November 5, 2006
Programming tips: learn optimization strategies
Recently I spent a little time talking about the tradeoffs between “concise” code and readable code in Python. Throughout that entry, I was using as an example a simple function which calculates numbers in the Fibonacci sequence; here’s one variation:
def fib(n): if n < 2: return n return fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)
The Fibonacci sequence is a classic example from introductory programming materials, because it teaches recursion, and recursion is an important core concept for productive programming. But it can also be useful for another educational topic: optimization. …