Explain to me what the big deal with tail call optimization is and why Python needs it

Question

So apparently, there\'s been a big brouhaha over whether or not Python needs tail call optimization. This came to a head when someone shipped Guido a copy of SICP because he di

Answer 1

Tail call optimization makes it easier to write recursive functions without worrying about a stack overflow:

def fac(n, result=1):
        if n > 1:
                return fac(n - 1, n * result)
        return result

Without tail call optimization, calling this with a big number could overflow the stack.