considered harmful


considered harmful

Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968 "Communications ofthe ACM", "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", fired the firstsalvo in the structured programming wars. Amusingly, the ACMconsidered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that itwill (by policy) no longer print an article taking soassertive a position against a coding practice. In theensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers andparodies have borne titles of the form "X considered Y". Thestructured-programming wars eventually blew over with therealisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titleshas remained as a persistent minor in-joke.