> I can't imagine programming without the knowledge of how things work at assembly level.
The author's point is that recursion is a pervasive concept that is essential to understand even how modern computer hardware works:
> 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.
The author is not suggesting that we forget about "what's really going on". He's rightly pointing out that you actually cannot understand what's really going on at all without first understanding recursive self-reference.
The author's point is that recursion is a pervasive concept that is essential to understand even how modern computer hardware works:
> 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.
The author is not suggesting that we forget about "what's really going on". He's rightly pointing out that you actually cannot understand what's really going on at all without first understanding recursive self-reference.