104
[History] An editor letter by Edsger Dijkstra, titled: "go to statements considered harmful" (march 1968). (dl.acm.org)
submitted 5 months ago by abbadon420@lemm.ee to c/programming@programming.dev
58 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] 0x0@programming.dev 10 points 5 months ago

goto does have some uses, such as single exit point, but should be used sparingly.

[-] billybong@lemmynsfw.com 3 points 5 months ago

Single exit point is an assembly rule that was mindlessly ported to C/C++. It doesn't make sense in a structured language.

[-] 0x0@programming.dev 3 points 5 months ago

Maybe for your use-cases, for mine i find it quite useful.

[-] Acters@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I'll be very interested to hear more, do you have a blog?

[-] 0x0@programming.dev 1 points 5 months ago

A common case is a function that uses resources like opening files, sockets, whatever. If there's an error you want to ensure a clean exit, so at different parts of said function you goto the end where you check if said resources are being used and release them before exiting.

Cleaner than constantly checking at every error.

this post was submitted on 19 May 2024
104 points (97.3% liked)

Programming

17314 readers
141 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
snowe@programming.dev
Ategon@programming.dev
MaungaHikoi@lemmy.nz