Re: GoTo
From: John McGrath (ng_at_jpmcgrath.net)
Date: 01/31/05
- Next message: David Marrs: "an uncomplicated java IDE"
- Previous message: Andrey Kuznetsov: "Re: High Quality Resizing"
- In reply to: Juha Laiho: "Re: GoTo"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 23:06:24 GMT
On 1/30/2005 at 3:04:31 PM, Juha Laiho wrote:
> Hmm.. on a more careful look: Dijkstra had titled the paper "Notes on
> Structured Programming"; later on, Wirth dubbed the paper as "Goto
> statement considered harmful". The paper is available at
> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD249.PDF
Actually "Notes on Structured Programming", which Dijkstra wrote in 1969,
is not the same thing as the "Go To Statement Considered Harmful" paper,
which was published in the March 1968 edition of the CACM as a letter to
the editor. The University of Texas (*the* web site to look for Dijksta's
papers) has the original, titled "A Case against the GO TO Statement":
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF
The ACM web site has the paper on their web site, as it was published in
"Communications of the ACM":
http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95/
In 2001, Dijkstra wrote a historical note describing the experiences that
led him to write the "Notes on Structured Programming" paper. At the end,
he added the following:
Finally a short story for the record. In 1968, the Communications of
the ACM published a text of mine under the title "The goto statement
considered harmful", which in later years would be most frequently
referenced, regrettably, however, often by authors who had seen no
more of it than its title, which became a cornerstone of my fame by
becoming a template: we would see all sorts of articles under the
title "X considered harmful" for almost any X, including one titled
"Dijkstra considered harmful". But what had happened? I had submitted
a paper under the title "A case against the goto statement", which,
in order to speed up its publication, the editor had changed into a
"letter to the Editor", and in the process he had given it a new title
of his own invention! The editor was Niklaus Wirth.
A PDF of Dijkstra's note (in his own handwriting) is available here:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd13xx/EWD1308.PDF
-- Regards, John McGrath
- Next message: David Marrs: "an uncomplicated java IDE"
- Previous message: Andrey Kuznetsov: "Re: High Quality Resizing"
- In reply to: Juha Laiho: "Re: GoTo"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
Relevant Pages
|
