Daily Meh is an edited stream of consciousness, by Simen.

[Python-Dev] Proper tail recursion

I just read Guido’s justification for not optimizing tail recursion in Python. It’s laughably weak:

I’m not interested in adding this to the official Python release.

One reason is that if an exception happens in such a tail-recursive call, the stack trace will be confusing.

Another reason is that I don’t think it’s a good idea to try to encourage a Scheme-ish “solve everything with recursion” programming style in Python.

Behold! Python can’t handle the power.