Recursion and Structural Thinking

Write recursive functions for list processing, comparing Lisp's original approach with modern functional languages.

Apply structural recursion to process recursive data types (e.g., lists, trees), recognizing it as the natural approach pioneered by the ML language family.

Identify tail-recursive functions and explain how compilers for languages like Scheme and Haskell perform tail-call optimization.

Transform non-tail-recursive functions into tail-recursive form using the accumulator-passing style.

Compare recursion-first (e.g., Haskell) and iteration-first (e.g., Python) design philosophies for solving problems.