[History] An editor letter by Edsger Dijkstra, titled: "go to statements considered harmful" (march 1968). - eviltoast

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.

  • ggppjj@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    It can be, sure. But when used in a limited manner where it makes sense it can be the more readable option. I’ve used it in a try/catch to retry the operation after changing a variable. One label (“reconnect”), one goto, totally easy to understand on a surface level.