> speaking of things considered harmful, line lengths of over 80 chars
> On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 11:27:59AM +0100, wintermute wrote:
>>Interesting. I've always wondered about things 'considered' to be bad.
>>Example the GOTO, most languages support a goto of some sort, so are
> if used properly, they actually can make code more readable.  but those
> proper occasions are quite rare really.  it's a good idea to avoid them
> since over use of goto will create what niall calls "write-only code."
Yes a clever term usually (and deservedly) attributed to perl.
Of course you can create write-only code in any language.
There's even a competition for obfuscated C code which is always
p.s. what sort of processing do you do with:

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From ilug-admin@linux.ie  Thu Aug  8 14:11:16 2002

schemers are often slagged of for that sort of thing
they "know the Value of Everything, Cost of Nothing"
did i get that the right way arround ?
--B
-----Original Message-----
From: John P. Looney [mailto:valen@tuatha.org]
Sent: 08 August 2002 11:38
To: ilug@linux.ie
Subject: Re: [ILUG] slashdot EW Dijkstra humor
On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 11:27:59AM +0100, wintermute mentioned:
> Interesting. I've always wondered about things 'considered' to be bad.
> Example the GOTO, most languages support a goto of some sort, so are gotos
really bad?
Yes. Especially in the languages he was talking about - C, Pascal and
Assembler. Goto's can be used well; there are a few used in the kernel
code to improve efficency. They are almost required in some languages
(like C) where 'break' or 'continue' can't be told how many loops/switches
to break out of.
But, in general, goto's make a mess of code.
> Is a loop or a recursive call actually any better than a goto
> or is the goto used as a kind of common enemy of
> programming syntax
> to make sure people use loops or recursion?
> <<To iterate is human, to recurse divine>>
Recursion is only truely useful if you have an infinite stack. People
that think they have an infinite stack shouldn't be let near a compiler.
> Kind of makes you wonder about things considered to be 'good'.  For
> example people bang on about polymorphism, but is there actually any
> advantage in using an overloaded function based on class inheritance?
I don't care, to be honest.
Kate
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