Recursion is (in many, but not all) languages slightly slower, and it does have some dangers (smashing the stack), but used properly it's a completely legitimate, valuable tool for production code.

Researchers at the University of Tübingen have found via experimentation that crows are capable of understanding the concept of recursion. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances ...

Researchers tested whether crows can grasp the concept of recursion, which they define as “the process of embedding structures within similar structures” in their paper published in November ...