In Scheme, tail-call optimization is part of the standard. Without this requirement the generated code would probably be much more similar to what you'd write b

In Scheme, tail-call optimization is part of the standard. Without this requirement the generated code would probably be much more similar to what you'd write by hand. On top of this, the generated code is said to be portable C. I've skimmed through the papers mentioned in the article years ago, but gave up understanding them. This article is golden if I really want to understand what's going on in a real-world use of the techniques described in those papers.