Tacopy
Ranked 6 of 14 Python libraries by recommenders
Short Python library adding tail call optimization to recursive functions, praised for its simple approach. Critics note it only handles tail recursion and adds overhead.
Short Python library adding tail call optimization to recursive functions, praised for its simple approach. Critics note it only handles tail recursion and adds overhead.
15 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 1 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 1 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Short, simple, straightforward implementation
“OP's approach is surprisingly straight forward, only a few hundred lines.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” “fairly succinct and to the point”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” Elegant way to keep recursion
“this was a net good since one can preserve the "clean syntax" from recursion”
Comment from 7 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” “seeing an elegant solution to this is really cool”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Only optimizes tail recursion, breaks some cases
“The current implementation breaks semantics of functions with tail recursion from within loops”
Comment from 13 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” “it doesn't really seem to be full Tail Call Optimization, but only optimizes tail recursion”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” Runtime rewriting adds overhead
“I'm also not convinced that this actually is worth the effort, considering it’s doing runtime rewriting of Python using Python.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” “There's quite a bit of overhead.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” Overkill for a few lines
“Why do i need a fully fledged library for something that is basically a few lines of code?”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” “I'm also not convinced that this actually is worth the effort, considering it’s doing runtime rewriting of Python using Python.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” Looks LLM-generated, obfuscated code
“It's very llm-y. But, kudos to them for preserving the commit history / being honest about it.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python” “you're calling a built in function, why make obfuscate this in an "llm way"”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Tacopy – Tail Call Optimization for Python”
Other Python libraries people recommend
The four most recommended other Python libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 14 Python libraries, rankedWhat people said
13 of the 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The current implementation breaks semantics of functions with tail recursion from within loops”
“this was a net good since one can preserve the "clean syntax" from recursion”
“It's a suboptimal implementation but it's interesting for the purpose of transpiling something like Scheme or ML”
“it doesn't really seem to be full Tail Call Optimization, but only optimizes tail recursion”
“this whole thing is equivalent to a goto at the beginning of a function”
“It's very llm-y. But, kudos to them for preserving the commit history / being honest about it.”
“I'm also not convinced that this actually is worth the effort, considering it’s doing runtime rewriting of Python using Python.”
“you're calling a built in function, why make obfuscate this in an "llm way"”
“seeing an elegant solution to this is really cool”
“OP's approach is surprisingly straight forward, only a few hundred lines.”
“fairly succinct and to the point”
“There's quite a bit of overhead.”
“Why do i need a fully fledged library for something that is basically a few lines of code?”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.