[venomsnake]

If you can grasp pointers, recursion, asynchronous programming/callbacks in less than a week (as a concepts, not apply-able skills) you have it.

[dmichulke]

Pro tip: In order to understand recursion, you have to either just know it or know someone who understands it.

[veddox]

Understanding recursion:

If you understand it, you're fine.

Otherwise, go back to the beginning.

[venomsnake]

Not at all. This is just basic mathematical induction in reverse. I think we learned it in 7th or 8th grade.

[unimpressive]

I think he was making a meta-joke about recursion.

[fleitz]

Not really, if you understand loops you understand recursion.

Loops are pretty easy to understand...

[abc_lisper]

Recursion is Mathematical Induction, written as a program.

[lexandstuff]

If you can grasp all those things in less than a week, than congratulations: you're a once-in-a-lifetime genius.

If it takes you years to grasp all those things like the majority of us, then that's fine too.

[venomsnake]

I have also been in class with 20-other once in a lifetime geniuses, and probably a total of 120 in my high school. And there was a whole chain of schools that specialized in math in the country. One per county.

From what I hear in MIT they give you the complete scheme language at the first lecture.

He asked about aptitude.

[i336_]

It took me several years to grasp pointers after having fed on BASIC since I was 7 :/

I'm fine with C now though.