StackOverflowError: where did the end condition go?

StackOverflowError: one of the things you learn early on is to make sure every loop and recursive call has a controlled end condition. Your resources are limited, and unbounded recursion or an endless loop is a local way to DDoS your own machine.

And then you see so many smart people running agents, which are scripts with unbounded loops, and advocating for the same.

I'm just not sure what changed in between that some of us missed.