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I love recursion. I think it simplifies things a lot. Another may disagree; I think it also makes the code a lot easier to read. However, I've noticed that recursion is not used as much in languages such C# as they are in LISP (which by the way is my favorite language because of the recursion).
Does anybody know if there is any good reasons not use recursion in the languages such as C#? Is it more expensive than iteration?
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The difference between recursion and loop is that recursion is a mechanism to call a function within the same function while loop is a control structure that allows executing a set of instructions again and again until the given condition is true.
In a Von Neumann Architecture, clearly "Iteration" is a simpler/basic concept than “Recursion". We have a form of "Iteration" at level 7, while "Recursion" is at level 14 of the concepts hierarchy. Iteration will always be faster in machine code because it implies less instructions therefore less CPU cycles.
Are they more expensive than iterations?
Yes they are. Many Lisp variants support the idea of a "tail-call optimisation" which allows many uses of a recursive function call to be converted into an iterative one (this is simplifying a bit). If tail-call is not supported, then a recursive function call will use progressively more memory on the stack.
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