I think it probably depends on how you think of the abstraction. Everyone readily thinks of loops, in the abstract, as "GOTO line X and do everything over agai

I think it probably depends on how you think of the abstraction. Everyone readily thinks of loops, in the abstract, as "GOTO line X and do everything over again, but using all the state that has changed since the last time we were at line X." Ideally, you can think of recursion as nearly the same thing: "GOTO line X and do this stuff again, but using these very clearly stated changes to the data." If you think of recursion that way, then it's fairly self-evidently easier to reason about. In practice, though, I've met few developers who think that way and haven't spent significant time doing functional programming. I'm guessing it's because you need to spend a fair bit of time with both abstractions before you can really grok either of them. Without that, they're just kind of intimidating. Recursion more so, because everyone's taught from a young age to think imperatively.