Why does erlang implement iteration by recursion instead of a loop?

[peerreynders]

• Learn You Some Erlang: Length of a Tail Recursion
• Erlang’s Tail Recursion is Not a Silver Bullet
• The Seven Myths of Erlang Performance: Tail-Recursive Functions are Much Faster Than Recursive Functions

Tail Call Optimization in Elixir & Erlang – not as efficient and important as you probably think

I wrote up a detailed blog post about tail call optimization in Elixir/Erlang and its performance. The TLDR; sort of is that none tail call optimized recursive functions (body-recursive) can be faster and more memory efficient than TCO functions. This is something that I never thought before, that TCO is always faster seems to be a common misconception. My example is also not contrived - it’s an implementation of map. Posting here to share as I think it’s important knowledge Also…