What has lisp ever done for reducing the memory footprint of a computer program? The answer is nothing, nothing at all. This is all the work of C.
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Anonymous2013-07-02 12:28
>>79 Recursion via a function call is NOT the same as a loop
Actually, assembly loop is a recursion.
In fact any (label label) pair juxtapostion serves as a self-reference (A -> A), linking label to itself.
>>79 Recursion via a function call is NOT the same as a loop
muh moot points
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Anonymous2013-07-02 17:49
>>75 But if you ask me, needing an optimisation for it to be possible to do anything useful with the language at all is a big FAIL.
True, but what are the other possibilities? You can give up functional-style iteration or add an explicit tail-recursion construct like Clojure's recur. The latter clutters the code and the former is unsuitable in some cases, altough I do think so-called ``purely functional programming'' is inane and insane.
>>79 Recursion via a function call is NOT the same as a loop, because that's not how real machines work. Just because some theorist with his head in the clouds (and possibly high on something) showed how they are in theory doesn't mean it's true in practice.
Tail-call recursion is just one of the many ways of looping. HIBT?