I remember what made me click was using a bit of assembly. If you imagine your code as a sequence of instructions, recursion is basically a `JMP` to the start

I remember what made me click was using a bit of assembly. If you imagine your code as a sequence of instructions, recursion is basically a `JMP` to the start of the stack again, normally with different values. Once a condition is met, instead of jumping back to the start, it returns something. That condition then repeats itself inside all the repetitions eventually returning the value to the original caller. # imagine we're recursing to subtract to zero 1. call function subtract with 10 (set x = 10) 2. subtract x by 1 3. if zero, return 0 4. else return the result of calling the function with x-1 (jump to 2) Once I realized deep down at the CPU level it's all a sequence of instructions, recursion is nothing but moving the pointer. With higher level languages there's a bit more involved, but the gist is the same.