[Python-Dev] Proper tail recursion (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Fri Jul 16 04:35:24 CEST 2004

> Still -1. I was understating my case: I find the "recursion is > the basis of everything" attitude harmful.

How can you then still implement ceval.c in a recursive fashion, since ceval is the "basis of everything" ??? In that sense, I'd like to discuss the "the Python interpreter implementaton is harmful" issue. But why should I bother. You have already reached more than you thought to reach with your language, so why should I care about reaching you? You probably wont even consider, so I don't even try, again.

Oh Christian, did you have a bad day again?

I didn't say "all recursion is evil". For a language interpreter recursion is perfect.

My dig was at the Schemers who would rather implement an array as a linked list and then optimize tail-recursion in the hope of getting some performance back -- in vain because they still can't get O(1) indexing.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list