Thank you for that Alan Kay quote. Brightened up my day. Since you also mentioned COBOL, and this is a thread about "goto", reminded me of the single most abhorrent thing I ever saw in COBOL (I had to convert a single COBOL batch process to ASP.Net as an intern back in 2003-4). "MOVE NEXT SENTENCE". What is this statement? An unlabelled goto. It literally jumps to the next period: "." in the source.
Now, I'm fine with judicious use of goto with good labels. (and, I've only used goto maybe 3 or 4 times in a 15 year career), but a blocky construct like "MOVE NEXT SENTENCE" in a language that also has lots of (all-caps required) block statements to jump to a tiny on the screen period...that is just evil. On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 1:09 PM, Rustom Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thursday, April 13, 2017 at 11:14:15 PM UTC+5:30, Steve D'Aprano wrote: > > Meyer's "Considered Harmful Essays Considered Harmful" essay is > hypocritical > > junk, and should be considered harmful. > > Your view. > Here's an alternative. > [Sorry its a vague memory of something I read more than a decade ago that > I cant > trace again] > Some unknown Cobol programmer talking about Dijkstra: > > Dijkstra used his enormous prestige to destroy Cobol. > We lost a great deal > What did he gain? > Ok so Cobol's control constructs are below par > But do any of its modern successors have its data-describing properties? > [the PIC clause] > > Or consider(!) Alan Kay's statement: "Arrogance in computer science is > measured > in nanodijktras" > Maybe that's a response to similar violent, unnecessary barbs from > Dijkstra? > -- > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list > -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
