How can I finally understand recursion, trees, and linked lists?

Don't worry too much! Recursion isn't as intuitive for most people right off the bat. When solving problems like finding the height of a tree, think about how you can use the recursive function itself to help determine what you need. Just like in real life, sometimes you need to break things down into smaller parts.

I've found that drawing things out helps a lot! When it comes to recursion, visualizing the call stack or the tree structure can make it easier to follow the flow of execution.

It’s totally okay to struggle with this—most people do at first. A crucial piece of advice is to make sure your recursive functions always have a base case; otherwise, they just keep calling themselves forever. Also, when you're dealing with recursion, just trust that the recursive calls will return what you expect. It’s like taking a leap of faith with your logic!

You're definitely not alone! Recursion can feel super abstract until it just clicks. Just keep practicing and remember, each recursive call works on a smaller instance of the same problem. Over time, it all starts to make sense.

Using a debugger can be a game changer. Just try stepping through your code with options like 'Step Into' and 'Step Over'. It helps to see how your code flows in real time and where it might be going wrong.