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Y: The Most Beautiful Idea in Computer Science explained in JavaScript

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In this post, we will talk about one of the most beautiful ideas in computer science: the Y-Combinator. And no, I’m not talking about the VC firm in Silicon ...

In this post, we will talk about one of the most beautiful ideas in computer science: the Y-Combinator . And no, I'm not talking about the VC firm in Silicon Valley , even though this post will explain why they've got this name. Put in simple terms, the Y-Combinator (also known as the fixed-point combinator) is a way of doing recursion in a language that does not explicitly supports it . Let's say you want to implement a recursive factorial function . In JavaScript, for example, you could simply do this: const factorial = n => n === 0 ? 1 : n * factorial (n - 1 ); But what if you couldn't use

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