This is from a seasoned users point-of-view: GOTO is bad -- this is based on experience from the early days of coding where GOTO was one of the few available constructs and as such, overly abused. This also stemmed from a time when little formality existed in terms of coding. Anyone receiving even cursory CS training in the last 20 years knows this and also knows that new constructs have been invented to replace the kludges GOTO was being used for.
GOTO is good -- there are still specific and meaningful uses of GOTO. Other constructs can be kludged to emulate these uses but that is the same poison that made GOTO so villified in the first place. GOTO will poison users -- this is a terrible argument. Users with CS training know the evils of misusued GOTO and presumably also the benefits of properly applied GOTO; they can reasonably be expected to use GOTO appropriately. Users without CS training (the real newbs) are more than likely to produce spotty code anyhow. It is rather unlikely that they will use GOTO because GOTO is not a natural way of coding in a modern environment like PHP, particularly when other more meaningful construct choices are available. The complaint that it will make newbs worseoff is somewhat bogus--until they get adequate training, they are going to produce marginal code at best and nothing can change that. The idea that someone will potentially have to maintain code written by a true newb who improperly used GOTO is both improbable and laughable. Since when does newb code become legacy code? Maintained code is almost always professional code; code written by newbs is typically throw-away amateur code. Indeed, it is likely easier to reimplement any newb generated code than it is to maintain it. There is no reason to assume that introducing GOTO will result in newbies being even worse coders than they already are or will incite them to start using GOTO for every imaginable problem. Here's a rather humble suggestion: don't call it GOTO. Call it "branch" or "jump" -- perhaps that will help keep the festering emotions concerning GOTO at bay :) Thanks for your time. xo boots -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
