I kind of agree with your teacher. Some things are easier with recursion, like traversing a tree. But outside of those I'd avoid using recursion. In other word

I kind of agree with your teacher. Some things are easier with recursion, like traversing a tree. But outside of those I'd avoid using recursion. In other words, only use recursion if you have a good reason. Your typical code base will use very little recursion, if any. It is generally less readable, and relatively easy to blow up your stack.