drblast didn't say TCO was fundamental (just that it's an incredibly useful optimization and there's no reason to omit it), and Guido didn't say TCO is a bug (b

drblast didn't say TCO was fundamental (just that it's an incredibly useful optimization and there's no reason to omit it), and Guido didn't say TCO is a bug (but that recursion shouldn't be the "basis of all programming"). There are two extremes here, but there is also a huge middle ground, where TCO is implemented but recursion is not the basis for all computation. Some of my favorite compilers do that.