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Re: I have a confession to make...

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Mark Bluemel <mark.bluemel@gmail.com> writes:

> On Sunday, 15 August 2021 at 22:14:48 UTC+1, Vir Campestris wrote:

>> I therefore have 3 nested loops: centre value, X and Y coordinates. 
>> 
>> And if I don't like the result I jump out of the X Y loops. Which is 
>> where I have that goto. 
>
> I gave up "goto" in the late 1970s, when I was programming in
> COBOL. Our in-house coding standards had Section and Paragraph names
> which reflected depth in the call hierarchy - paragraphs could have
> names like C-100, CA-100, CBA-100. The risk of typos ("GO TO CA-100"
> when you meant "GO TO CAA-100") and the general inelegance of it all
> led me to give up on "GO TO".

Grim.  I, too, last used a GOTO in the late 70s when my job was fixing
bugs in FORTRAN code, mostly written by science subject specialists in
the course of their research.  By the time I saw the code it was usually
hundreds of lines (well, cards) or tangled loops.  Every GOTO had
probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but the cumulative effect
resulted in a program that even he author could not understand.  It put
me off for life.

Dijkstra was writing in the era.  Had the worst abuse of a GOTO been a
jump to a common exit block in a function or breaking out of a nested
loop, I doubt we'd have the polemic we now have.  I'd prefer cleaner
language construction such as named loops (for break), final blocks in
functions and, maybe, co-routines or generators for the few other very
rare use cases.

That said, I've still never had to use one.  I use the fact that I want
one to prompt me to think if I've got the code wrong and, so far, I
always decide I have.

-- 
Ben.

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Thread

I have a confession to make... Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> - 2021-08-15 22:14 +0100
  Re: I have a confession to make... Keith Thompson <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> - 2021-08-15 14:44 -0700
    Re: I have a confession to make... Thiago Adams <thiago.adams@gmail.com> - 2021-08-15 15:56 -0700
      Re: I have a confession to make... Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2021-08-16 01:50 +0100
  Re: I have a confession to make... Bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2021-08-16 00:18 +0100
  Re: I have a confession to make... DFS <nospam@dfs.com> - 2021-08-15 20:31 -0400
  Re: I have a confession to make... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-08-16 08:20 +0200
    Re: I have a confession to make... "Chris M. Thomasson" <chris.m.thomasson.1@gmail.com> - 2021-08-15 23:21 -0700
    Re: I have a confession to make... Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> - 2021-08-17 21:43 +0100
  Re: I have a confession to make... Mark Bluemel <mark.bluemel@gmail.com> - 2021-08-16 00:32 -0700
    Re: I have a confession to make... Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2021-08-16 14:21 +0100
      Re: I have a confession to make... Bart <bc@freeuk.com> - 2021-08-16 17:48 +0100
      Re: I have a confession to make... Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> - 2021-09-06 06:30 -0700
        Re: I have a confession to make... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-09-06 18:04 +0200

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