[chriswarbo]

> The counterpoint there is, tail calls are just rewrites for looping constructs, as Guido admits in point 3

Except they're not. Here are some functions using tail-calls:

    checks = {
      'odd' : lambda n: False if n <= 0 else checks['even'](n-1),
      'even': lambda n: True  if n <= 0 else checks['odd' ](n-1)
    }

These aren't a direct translation of loops, for a few reasons:

- Loops are statements, which can't be used in lambda expressions

- To use statements, we would need to define named functions (using `def`), but that too is a statement

- The names introduced by `def` would need to be unique, to avoid clobbering any existing names. This may require a fresh scope.

- We would need to inline each function's logic into the other

- We would need some intermediate state (separate from the argument 'n') to keep track of whether we're up to even or odd