I think recursion is very much about finding the right application to learn it, rather than trying to shoehorn an example that doesn't wind up needing a recursi

I think recursion is very much about finding the right application to learn it, rather than trying to shoehorn an example that doesn't wind up needing a recursive solution. I wound up needing to learn recursion very early on in my programming journey because the problem space I was working in at the time (3D computer graphics) needed it. I found it relatively easy to reason about recursion because the solutions became simpler, more efficient, and more effective when they were solved recursively. Finding those problems that clearly need recursion, are simple enough to grasp, and make good sense are hard, not recursion itself. The variety of contexts that beginners have and the gravitation of computer science to tree traversals as a standard example (or a contrived one like this) is why I think so many get tripped up on recursion when it's introduced.