goto

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 16:37:57 -0400, rbt wrote:

> Shouldn't that be "to the horror of all your goto-snob friends."
> 
> IMO, most of the people who deride goto do so because they heard or read
> where someone else did. 

Or because they actually programmed in languages that used goto for flow
control. Some of us have even programmed in versions of BASIC that didn't
have FOR or WHILE loops, you had to roll your own out of gotos.

How about you? How many times have you had to maintain and debug spaghetti
code sprinkled with gotos all over the place?
 
> Many of the world's most profitable software companies (MS for example)
> have thousands of goto statements in their code... oh the horror of it
> all. Why aren't these enlightened-by-the-gods know-it-alls as profitable
> as these obviously ignorant companies?

You know, I agree with you here. Why, just the other day I was discussing
computer systems with my Aunt Tilly, who wanted to buy a computer so she
could send emails to her friends and relatives. I suggested she buy a Mac,
and she said "Well, I thought about buying a Mac, but I'm afraid I can't
possibly use any software that wasn't written using goto. So I'm going to
buy a Windows machine. Do you recommend any anti-virus and anti-spyware
software that's easy to use?"


-- 
Steven.