> The .NET platform even has an implementation of tail recursion , now, though the C# compile will not generate IL that uses it, which makes it inaccessible for most people.

Sort of. It just so happens that the tail call optimization does get used on x64 platforms because of an implementation detail of the 64-bit JIT.

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/davbr/archive/2007/06/20/tail-call-j...