[PRL] almost tail-calling (was: Re: deeep stack)

[Matthias Felleisen]

On May 22, 2008, at 8:31 PM, John Clements wrote:

>
> My point is not that Java doesn't need to be tail-calling; it does.
> Instead, I'm simply pointing out that teaching students to write
> programs in a recursive fashion in Java is not as irresponsible as
> it's made out to be by loopfans.


You are absolutely correct. That's why "How to Design Classes" pushes  
design-that-matches-data first and admits the possibility of failures  
toward the end. This is the obligation we have: show students that  
stack space is exhaustable in Java when Scheme runs in constant  
space. Then we need to say "here are loops but they only work for  
linear collections and traversals and even then they force you away  
from OOP". -- Matthias