> In 2001 Mark Probst implemented tail-call optimization in GCC

MSVC didn't add tail-call optimisation until sometime in the 2010s, IIRC.

I distinctly remember sending a tail-recursive C++ program to someone who developed on Windows, and it crashing, in the late mid-to-late 2000s.

MSVC stands for MicroSoft Visual C++ compiler AFAIK.

It famously doesn’t support a few features of C99.

They don’t really seem to care much about regular C support (non-C++).

	▲	pjmlp 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		They officially saw no need for C support going forward. https://herbsutter.com/2012/05/03/reader-qa-what-about-vc-an... Note, "If you really need either of the following.....then we recommend that you consider using a different compiler such as Intel or gcc (short-term) and/or pressure your standards committee representatives to have ISO C++ include more of the C standard (longer-term)." Which is kind of why nowadays clang is part of Visual Studio as well. However, after Satya got into the whole Microsoft <3 FOSS, this changed a bit, https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/c11-and-c17-standard-... There are a few blogs after that, so at least up to C17 minus the optional parts from C11, the support is there. It remains to be seen if anything C23 or later will ever come into MSVC, and then again, clang is part of VS installer.