It's like, why use one synonym and not the other? Sometimes it's because writing things in an immutable manner makes things clearer. Other code that can benefit are certain coroutines and generators.
> It's like, why use one synonym and not the other? Sometimes it's because writing things in an immutable manner makes things clearer.
That's true in many situations, but in this case the equivalence between the two is so straightforward that I can't see recursion gaining you any clarity. Perhaps you have a concrete example?
I can't think of a specific example but I do know that there have been times where I have chosen to write a loop as tail recursion and times where I have used mutable variables and a while loop. Why one or the other might be recursion better capturing intent, preferring immutability, efficiency or just a matter of taste.
Sometimes it makes more sense and is more flexible to package functionality as a recursive function, then mutation and variables feel like clutter. Other sometimes using recursion instead of a loop gains nothing expressively. Or sometimes structural recursion + pattern matching is the much more elegant approach in terms of communicating and capturing the essence of the algorithm.
