Re: [stack] disallowing recursive definitions

On Mar 3, 2008, at 3:50 PM, William Tanksley, Jr wrote:

>> With a concatenative tail-call you're passing the stack as an
>> argument. In other words, you pass the entire state of the program!
>
> Yes, this is how concatenative languages are modeled. That's how
> *every* step in their execution is modeled, not just tail-calls or
> calls. If this were a problem, concatenative languages would be
> universally problematic, not merely problematic in the presence of
> tail-calls.

Indeed, and I'd argue that this is exactly why many people find stack- 
based languages universally problematic. They're taking issue with all  
of this state passing, although they phrase it like "I can't keep the  
stack in my head". Of course this isn't a problem in practice,  
particularly when you have type inference involved and can get a quick  
summary of what a function cares about, but it does seem to be the  
source of many negative first impressions.

- John