Tail Call Interpreters: Four Years of Progress

Four years ago, an article on writing blazing-fast interpreters using tail calls and the `musttail` attribute sparked considerable interest. Now, this technique sees adoption in Python 3.14, LuaJIT Remake, and more, delivering significant performance gains. The article explores GCC and Clang's `musttail` support, the potential impact of the C standard's "return goto" proposal on tail-call interpreters, and details the roles of `preserve_none` and `preserve_most` attributes in optimizing tail-call interpreters. It concludes with a summary of exciting progress in compiler and programming language interpreter development.