Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Lew Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Did the sort do anything? Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 22:40:44 -0400 Organization: albasani.net Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: news.albasani.net WqhO3kQIUgK4ZUIxQ/IpbOXxtB3VE/oq7OODHYrRtnQKPAManno6H6AOXXaqosKZC9qhJEJngYZJa1Q+2xeEbnyaNfyda0w3SEo9x6C5n1MAvJPlXPw/rHG8KqsqDypn NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 16 May 2011 02:40:43 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: news.albasani.net; logging-data="mT1u+lcQZnLkntwcdQCoqpBCIzLf0Z2lP+/wwQjhGbN+wQOcVBAUbKcUX0Ti42SOk768sRLd61y8GE/rdsWNlK4QvRdlitNPdi1mqbG6CeSU9x3rXeGWjQICo0DaLvi/"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@albasani.net" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110424 Thunderbird/3.1.10 In-Reply-To: Cancel-Lock: sha1:AhH4r7QDR5hwJ+i/XMVmVVXb/10= Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:4141 Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: > Tom Anderson wrote: >> Basically, Dijkstra was a brilliant guy, but a bit of a bastard. > He was right about gotos being harmful, but I’m still not sure I understand He was stretching a point to make a point, of course, and the considered reader will factor that in. You cannot have a useful computer program without gotos. It was the willy-nilly, undisciplined, wild goto that Dijkstra deprecated. He specifically states, "The unbridled use of the go to statement has as an immediate consequence that it becomes terribly hard to find a meaningful set of coordinates in which to describe the process progress." Note that he's speaking of "unbridled" use. Great word. The solution, of course, is to harness the goto as one would a horse - confine it to the traces of an 'if', 'for', 'while', 'do', 'switch', or method. > his remark that “computer science is no more about computers than astronomy > is about telescopes”. He's saying the science is about the science, not the instrument used. He's also being intentionally coy. Surely you recognize the pattern. -- Lew Honi soit qui mal y pense. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Friz.jpg