Playing around with tail recursion this week. Who knew Kotlin could make my favourite data structure...

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[Sam]

Playing around with tail recursion this week. Who knew Kotlin could make my favourite data structure even more fun to implement?
https://betterprogramming.pub/lock-free-stacks-are-even-cooler-in-kotlin-5ccccb37bae0?sk=a922e6096df376b09730afa5e1a3c4a2

[Youssef Shoaib [MOD]]

Very neat article! Tailrec makes it a lot clearer what's going on I think, although seeing the imperative version helped clarify it a bit more. One neat way to show that the stack really needs just one value is to make it a value class with the atomic reference as its underlying value. It makes it very clear that this implementation is barely anything more complicated than the initial top-level stack where you just had a reference to the head.

Also, hate to be that guy, but medium isn't really the friendliest platform for readers. I get it from a writer's perspective, but just FYI some people are put off when they see a medium article. Just my personal opinion though.

[Sam]

Thanks! The value class suggestion is very nice, I'll have to give it a try. I appreciate the comment about Medium too. The links I share here are always paywall-free, but in principle I'm open to sharing on other platforms too.

[Youssef Shoaib [MOD]]

Oh I wasn't aware paywall-free links are even an option. I think it makes sense to continue on medium out of convenience then! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the world!

[Edoardo Luppi]

It's a pity in years of Kotlin I haven't got to use tailrec once 😞

[Edoardo Luppi]

Just finished reading it, very well written.
You could even use atomicfu and make it multiplatform 👀

[Sam]

Yeah, I wanted to try that! Unfortunately that would have ruled out using the online playground for runnable examples, though 😞