Promoting Python

[Chris Angelico]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 12:14 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <marko at pacujo.net> wrote:
> Seriously, Python wouldn't be, couldn't be Turing-complete without
> "while" (mainly because it doesn't support tail-recursion elimination).

Side point: Turing completeness actually assumes a mythical Turing
machine with infinite memory. So Python could be implemented without
tail call elimination, executed on a machine with infinite stack
space, and would only need removal of sys.*recursion_limit, and it'd
be valid. The *language* isn't broken because of that. Plus, anyone
could implement a Python interpreter with TCE. There might well be
some out there already. The only issue is that you'd mess with
tracebacks, so Guido doesn't want it.

ChrisA