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> It bothers me when "goto" is assumed to be "a maligned language construct". That's a statement about what people say about the feature, not about the featur
by 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
> It bothers me when "goto" is assumed to be "a maligned language construct".
That's a statement about what people say about the feature, not about the feature itself. The subtlety here is that malign as an adjective refers to something evil or ill-intentioned, while as a verb it means something closer to slander or defame. It's frequently (mostly?) used in a context of skepticism regarding the claims in question, especially in the construction much-maligned.
- simias 8y agoSounds a bit like a strawman then, does anybody actually maligns "goto" as an error handling construct in C? It's pretty standard in my experience. It's goto "like in BASIC" that's utterly evil and rightfully maligned. And having learned C coming from BASIC I speak from experience...
- MikkoFinell 8y agoYes actually. Our teacher in university described it as "Something really bad".
- simias 8y agoIn the context of C or C++? I've read similar warnings in C++ tutorials in the past and I tend to agree with them, in C it's just silly however.
- MikkoFinell 8y agoIn the context of a C systems programming class.
- Lurker397412 8y agoI would not put the opinion of an academic over a practitioner in any field, except one purely theoretical -- and CS is most certainly theoretical