In my first year programming course, our prof spent 10-15 minutes at most talking about recursion. I was already familiar with it, but my classmates (mostly non

In my first year programming course, our prof spent 10-15 minutes at most talking about recursion. I was already familiar with it, but my classmates (mostly non-CS majors) had no problems understanding the concept. Since that experience I'm always slightly amused when I hear people saying that teaching basics of recursion is hard. Perhaps it isn't taught properly? When you're just starting out with it, there really isn't much to teach though.