.NET has explicit tailcalls - they were made for and are heavily used by F#.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.reflecti...
https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/docs/design/feat...
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.reflecti...
https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/docs/design/feat...
https://news.microsoft.com/2001/10/22/massive-industry-and-d...
Anyone with the pre-release MSDN .NET SDK that was initially made available to MSFT Partners, with alpha documentation written in red, has a folder with tons of functional languages that could take advantage of tail calls.
F# only came later into the picture, even considering its OCaml for .NET origin.
As an aside, and as someone who's currently going through materials such as Crafting Interpreters (and who knows what else based on suggestions from r/compilers), is there a, I guess, guide for people who want to implement a compiler that targets the CLR/CLI?
I have a copy of CLR via C# 4th edition, but other than that not sure what else I can reference targeting anything newer than .NET Framework 4
This might be a bit of a learning curve if you don't have experience with writing compilers like that though.
There are other materials that might prove useful should you go down this path:
- A series of blog posts of a student who is writing a Rust to .NET compiler which you could follow along: https://fractalfir.github.io/generated_html/home.html The project itself: https://github.com/FractalFir/rustc_codegen_clr
- A video series on writing a compiler for .NET from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgHIkdUQbp0&list=PLRAdsfhKI4... Notes: https://github.com/terrajobst/minsk/tree/master/docs
As for CLR via C#, while it has certain facts that remained the same, the ecosystem has changed a lot since then, you really want to target the latest LTS to get best experience and performance. If you liked it, then I can strongly suggest https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/tree/main/docs/design/core... which covers .NET runtime internals.
p.s.: if it's any consolation, the promise in CLR via C# of JIT having the advantage of dynamically profiling code execution and compiling to profile-guided version, tuned to the exact hardware and environment is finally fulfilled, many years later :)