Why should recursion be preferred over iteration?

Question

Iteration is more performant than recursion, right? Then why do some people opine that recursion is better (more elegant, in their words) than iteration? I really don\'t see

Answer 1

Iteration is more performant than recursion, right?

Yes.

However, when you have a problem which maps perfectly to a Recursive Data Structure, the better solution is always recursive.

If you pretend to solve the problem with iterations you'll end up reinventing the stack and creating a messier and ugly code, compared to the elegant recursive version of the code.

That said, Iteration will always be faster than Recursion. (in a Von Neumann Architecture), so if you use recursion always, even where a loop will suffice, you'll pay a performance penalty.

Is recursion ever faster than looping?