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by ef4
5072 days ago
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TCO is an optimization, it doesn't affect correctness. So you can ignore not having it, until you run out of stack. There is a much bigger reason to stick with Scheme for SICP: all the meta-circular evaluator stuff where you learn to implement Scheme in Scheme. I supposed you could implement Scheme in Javascript, but then you'd still need to learn Scheme. And you certainly won't want to implement Javascript in Javascript. |
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Correct. Though CPU performance is an issue that tail recursion optimisation addresses too. For simple functions building up the stack frames and deallocating them afterwards can be more work than the function itself. For deep recursion stack space is the problem you usually hit first, but for code with tight performance requirements no always.
>And you certainly won't want to implement Javascript in Javascript.
Oh I don't know, it could be an interesting project if only for an exercise in intellectual onanism!
In fact I've heard of it being done a few times. The first ones that pop up in Google are http://sns.cs.princeton.edu/2012/04/javascript-in-javascript... which is aimed at sand-boxing (and looks like an interesting if not efficient idea) and https://github.com/mozilla/narcissus/ which has the stated goal of being used for experimentation with the language itself (so the fact it is implemented in javascript is probably less relevant).