3 ms·
> Dijkstra always contended GOTOs were harmful! - The bug here has nothing to do with GOTO. - Dijkstra said a lot of stupid things, this is one of them. Parsi
by laureny 13y ago
> Dijkstra always contended GOTOs were harmful!
- The bug here has nothing to do with GOTO.
- Dijkstra said a lot of stupid things, this is one of them. Parsimonious use of GOTO is fine and sometimes leads to clearer code (exiting deeply nested conditions for example).
- Another stupid thing that Dijkstra said is that anyone who started by learning BASIC has their brain corrupted forever, which is total nonsense (I bet most people reading this started with BASIC and turned out just fine).
- lukasLansky 13y agoThere is a context missing. The Dijkstra quote is really old (Wikipedia dates it to 1975) and do not talk about "modern Basic" we know, with a good support for structured programming -- it's about a language where GOTO's were used instead of proper loops. It's certainly still an exageration to speak about "brain corruption", but I think I know why he put such emphasis on the statement.
- laureny 13y agoThe kind of BASIC he was referring to matters little: his point that learning one bad language can forever ruin a developer is absurd.