>the way tail calls work in functional languages comes to mind tail call optimizations are useful as optimizations. But in a language like scheme, tail calls

>the way tail calls work in functional languages comes to mind tail call optimizations are useful as optimizations. But in a language like scheme, tail calls are required to be implemented as loops. If you don't do that, then people can't write code that relies on it. Scheme treats tail call handling as a semantic, not as an optimization.