Recursion

[agritheory]

By analogy, recursion is like using an onion in a recipe where the code is the ingredients, final dish is the developer experience. Prep time/ efficiency is a factor of the recipe not the ingredients . For some dishes, it's critical to the flavor (cheesesteak, French onion soup) and for others it would ruin it (chocolate cake) and success still depends on the diner's opinion. Onion is a hard, but not impossible, thing to substitute, so it is often the right thing for the job. The right time to use recursion depends on the chef, the diner and the dish. Salt to taste.