RubyConf 2016 - Why recursion matters by James Coglan In modern programming, recursion is so common that we take it for granted. We work with recursive processes and structures every day, and it's easy to forget that recursion was once a highly contentious issue in programming language design. But there's more to recursion than meets the eye. In this talk I'll discuss how it is fundamental to computing; how it can prove programs are correct, make them run faster, and even let you run programs backwards! Along the way we'll meet maths, Haskell, Bash, JavaScript, and our old friend Ruby doing some very surprising things.