We Are Sorry to Inform You

E.W. DIJKSTRA "Goto Statement Considered Harmful." This paper tries to convince us that the well-known goto statement should be eliminated from our programming languages or, at least (since I don't think that it will ever be eliminated), that programmers should not use it. It is not clear what should replace it. The paper doesn't explain to us what would be the use of the "if" statement without a "goto" to redirect the flow of execution: Should all our postconditions consist of a single statement, or should we only use the arithmetic "if," which doesn't contain the offensive "goto"? And how will one deal with the case in which, having reached the end of an alternative, the program needs to continue the execution somewhere else? The author is a proponent of the so-called "structured programming" style, in which, if I get it right, gotos are replaced by indentation. Structured programming is a nice academic exercise, which works well for small examples, but I doubt that any real-world program will ever be written in such a style. More than 10 years of industrial experience with Fortran have proved conclusively to everybody concerned that, in the real world, the goto is useful and necessary: its presence might cause some inconveniences in debugging, but it is a de facto standard and we must live with it. It will take more than the academic elucubrations of a purist to remove it from our languages. Publishing this would waste valuable paper: Should it be published, I am as sure it will go uncited and unnoticed as I am confident that, 30 years from now, the goto will still be alive and well and used as widely as it is today. Confidential comments to the editor: The author should withdraw the paper and submit it someplace where it will not be peer reviewed. A letter to the editor would be a perfect choice: Nobody will notice it there!