Well, sure, you're absolutely right that it's best to write high-quality code so that you avoid firefighting in the first place. But that's an orthogonal quest

Well, sure, you're absolutely right that it's best to write high-quality code so that you avoid firefighting in the first place. But that's an orthogonal question to whether the number of while loops is relevant to code quality. Most programs (or even subtasks) aren't Turing machines - they are "unbounded" in that they're supposed to run indefinitely until someone tells them to quit, or until they abruptly hit EOF, end of stream, whatever. You don't improve such logic by making them "bounded" - it will be in fact missing the point. * If you prefer, change 11 pm to 11 am and my point still stands (though I'll be less cranky and less likely to rage-quit).