Comment by ufo

In OP's case, the individual functions are replacing small fragments of code that would have been basic blocks inside a larger function. The tail calls are replacing gotos. Those things also wouldn't have produced a stack trace.

There are other reasons why this style of programming isn't the default. It requires restructuring the program using tail calls. You commandeer the registers that are normally used for function parameters and force the compiler to use them for your most important variables. But at the same time, it also means that trying to call a normal function will compete with those registers. This optimization technique works better if the inner loop that you're optimizing doesn't have many function calls in the fast path (before you break it down in a network of tail-call functions).