Considered harmful
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In computer science and related disciplines, "considered harmful" is a phrase popularly used in the titles of diatribes and other critical essays. It originates with Edsger Dijkstra's letter "Go To Statement Considered Harmful"[#endnote_dijkstra1968], published in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, in which he criticized the excessive use of the GOTO statement in programming languages of the day and advocated structured programming instead. Structured programming is not as widely debated in contemporary computer science, but the pithy and adaptable phrase "something considered harmful" (actually the invention of the ACM editor Niklaus Wirth, and not Dijkstra) continues to be used to indicate that an article contains controversial and strongly asserted views.
Frank Rubin published a criticism of Dijkstra's letter in the March 1987 Communications of the ACM titled "'GOTO Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful". Donald Moore et al. published a reply in the May 1987 CACM titled "'"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?". (Dijkstra's own response to this controversy was thankfully titled "On a somewhat disappointing correspondence"[#endnote_ewd1009].)
Some variants with replacement adjectives ("considered silly", etc.) have been noted in hacker jargon[#endnote_esr-jargon]. The phrase is also occasionally capitalized for effect.
See also
References
- ↑ Dijkstra (1968), [Go To Statement Considered Harmful], Communications of the ACM, March 1968
- ↑ Dijkstra (1987), [On a somewhat disappointing correspondence]
- ↑ Raymond et al, [The Jargon File]
External links
- ["Considered Harmful" Essays Considered Harmful] (Eric A. Meyer, Dec 2002).
- [Creative Commons -NC Licenses Considered Harmful] (Angela Beesley, Sep 2005).
- [Csh Programming Considered Harmful] (Tom Christiansen, 6 Oct 1996)
- [Go To Statement Considered Harmful: A Retrospective] (David R. Tribble, Feb 2005).
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