[technomancy]

> Could someone give an example where it really shines and clojure's loop/recur just doesn't?

In practice you don't replace TCO with loop/recur; you replace it with lazy sequences. They both solve the "how to work on unbounded data while consuming bounded memory" problem even though at first glance loop/recur seems more similar.

Most people who complain about not having TCO have not fully wrapped their heads around lazy sequences.