This is an excellent article that sets context for, and summarizes, the “goto debate”.
I know modern programmers who have simply absorbed the received wisdom that “goto is terrible” and wonder why there even is/was a debate; this short and concise article should show what goto was used for.
At the time Dijkstra wrote (the letter that the editor titled) "Go To Statement Considered Harmful", his proposal would have meant programming in a C-language (of course I know C didn't exist then...) without any `break` or `continue` in loops, and without `return` except at the end of a function. There are very few languages today that don't have `break` and `continue`, and in them (Lua for instance) `goto` is still used.
As the article mentions, it takes much from Knuth's wonderful summarization paper “Structured Programming with Go To Statements”, and if you find this interesting you should definitely read it! https://pic.plover.com/knuth-GOTO.pdf (Also reprinted in his book/collection titled Literate Programming.)
I know modern programmers who have simply absorbed the received wisdom that “goto is terrible” and wonder why there even is/was a debate; this short and concise article should show what goto was used for.
At the time Dijkstra wrote (the letter that the editor titled) "Go To Statement Considered Harmful", his proposal would have meant programming in a C-language (of course I know C didn't exist then...) without any `break` or `continue` in loops, and without `return` except at the end of a function. There are very few languages today that don't have `break` and `continue`, and in them (Lua for instance) `goto` is still used.
As the article mentions, it takes much from Knuth's wonderful summarization paper “Structured Programming with Go To Statements”, and if you find this interesting you should definitely read it! https://pic.plover.com/knuth-GOTO.pdf (Also reprinted in his book/collection titled Literate Programming.)