Java factorial recursion explained Notice how the recursive Java factorial function does not need an iterative loop. Instead, the code repeatedly calls itself until a stop condition is met. In this ...

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.

I believe you don't benefit from tail recursion on a Java virtual machine, so anything that has lot of depth recursion in Java is problematic.