comp.lang.functionalより

Apparently, Simon Peyton-Jones asked them to add a tail-call primitive in the virtual
machine language, somehing absolutely necessary for getting an efficient
implementation of any functional languages.
In fact, the many projects that tried to compile an FP to the JVM failed because of the inability to
optimise tail-calls (something your average C-compiler doesn't even do
right) - there were other reasons why the JVM is not an ideal VM for FPs,
but this is a critical issue.