<i>&gt; I can&#x27;t imagine programming without the knowledge of how things work at assembly level.</i><p>The author&#x27;s point is that recursion is a pervasive <i>concept</i> that is essential to understand even how modern computer hardware works:<p><i>&gt;  the very concept of a digital computer is grounded in recursive self-reference (the cross-connection of gates to form a latch), which, needless to say, does not involve a stack.  Not only do real programmers use recursion, there could not even be programmers were it not for that.</i><p>The author is not suggesting that we forget about &quot;what&#x27;s really going on&quot;. He&#x27;s rightly pointing out that you actually cannot understand what&#x27;s really going on at all without first understanding recursive self-reference.