gotos

[Dave Jones]

in article <1988Apr11.201934.20594 at utzoo.uucp>, henry at utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) says:
> 
>> >> Try to pull that around here, and you'd be in the pond in about ten
>> >> minutes flat.
>> 
>> > Remind me never to buy any software from you guys!
>> 
>> I fail to see any justification for such a remark.  I think an apology
>> is in order.
> 
> Sorry, I consider the remark well-justified and will not apologize.  If
> you read my other postings on the subject, you will see that I consider
> the use of gotos, especially the frequent use of gotos, to be a sign of
> poor organization and "coding before thinking".  Given this opinion, it
> is hardly surprising that I would be reluctant to buy software from an
> organization which endorses routine use of gotos.
> -- 
> "Noalias must go.  This is           |  Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
> non-negotiable."  --DMR              | {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,utai}!utzoo!henry


I should not say any more about this, but I can not restrain myself.

My flip remark about the dousing of stuffed shirts was ill judged.
In my defense, let me say that it never occurred to me that Mr. Spencer 
was serious about fining employees for using a goto statement.
I incorrectly thought that I was continuing a joke which he had started.

I did make the postings in good faith, in the sincere expectation of
casting some light on a subject which reappears in the group from time
to time.   Unlike the redoubtable Mr. Spencer, I do not pretend to make 
judgemental pronouncements about the quality of thought of those who use 
or do not use an occasional goto.  But I feel that my seventeen years of 
experience programming,  and my experiences a university computer science 
professor give me some perspective, if nothing else.

Mr Spencer, Mr. David Brown, and the loquacious Mr. Gwyn all say straight 
out that I am an advocate of the use of the goto statement.
But I never once in any of my postings endorsed the use of the goto 
statement!  You may verify as much if you will reread the postings.
(In one posting I said that if I have to read long long blocks,
I would prefer that they be exited by a goto rather than a "break",
simply because it's easier to find the label than it is to find
the closing curly brace.  This "lesser of two evils" is hardly an
endorsement.)  I only stated that the importance which some people place
on avoiding the gotos is exceedingly exaggerated, and that time spent
campaigning against its use is misspent. This is an opinion which I 
still hold. 

But all this is quite incidental.  Mr. Spencer is entitled to his
opinions about programming techniques, as am I. 
I objected not to Mr. Spencer's mistaken reading of my postings.  
I objected to his affrontary.

You three, Spencer, Brown, and Gwyn, hold that it is proper for you to 
publicly criticize the software produced by the company which employs me, 
on the basis of a few lines that I wrote here.  To presume that
you are competent to judge products you have never used is 
ridiculous.  To presume to make such pronouncements publicly is,
by my values, rude at best. Perhaps I should only say that we have 
differing values not only about some  small software engineering matters, 
but also about what constitutes  good manners and acceptable behavior.

I find this whole matter very distasteful.  I regret having provoked it.

I'm through with comp.lang.c for a while.