Quick Answer

Caused by excessive recursion or circular dependencies.

Understanding the Issue

The JVM throws this error when the call stack exceeds its limit, typically from infinite recursion or very deep method nesting.

The Problem

This code demonstrates the issue:

Java Error 
// Problem: Infinite recursion
public class Factorial {
    public int calculate(int n) {
        return n * calculate(n-1);  // Missing base case
    }
}

The Solution

Here's the corrected code:

Java Fixed 
// Solution 1: Add base case
public int calculate(int n) {
    if (n <= 1) return 1;
    return n * calculate(n-1);
}

// Solution 2: Iterative approach
public int calculate(int n) {
    int result = 1;
    for (int i = 2; i <= n; i++)
        result *= i;
    return result;
}

Key Takeaways

Always define base cases in recursion or convert to iteration.