103
[History] An editor letter by Edsger Dijkstra, titled: "go to statements considered harmful" (march 1968). (dl.acm.org)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
58 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

In this letter, Dijkstra talks about readability and maintainability in a time where those topics were rarely talked about (1968). This letter was one of the main causes why modern programmers don't have to trouble themselves with goto statements. Older languages like Java and C# still have a (discouraged) goto statement, because they (mindlessly) copied it from C, which (mindlessly) copied it from Assembly, but more modern languages like Swift and Kotlin don't even have a goto statement anymore.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

C is one of the few languages where using goto makes sense as a poor man's local error/cleanup handler.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •