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- Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!devnull!rgp
- From: rgp@mpd.tandem.com (Ramon Pantin)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: GOTO, was: Tiny proposal for na
- Message-ID: <2330@devnull.mpd.tandem.com>
- Date: 28 Aug 92 05:37:15 GMT
- References: <1992Aug26.130335.26725@hemlock.cray.com> <1992Aug26.194538.1598@spss.com> <rmartin.714931485@thor>
- Sender: news@devnull.mpd.tandem.com
- Organization: Tandem Computers, Micro-Products Division
- Lines: 50
-
- In article <rmartin.714931485@thor> rmartin@thor.Rational.COM (Bob Martin) writes:
- >hosken@spss.com (Bill Hosken) writes:
- >
- >>Clear thinking helps to write good code, gotos whether or not.
- >
- >This is sort of like saying: "I am an expert driver, my clarity of
- >driving skills entitles me to ignore certain stop signs, when I know
- >(by virtue of my great skill) that there is no cross traffic.
- >
- >You see, I am such a good driver, that the legal alcohol limit does
- >not apply to me. Nor do speed limits, detour signs, or even
- >the need to use headlights at night."
- >...
-
- When was the last time that a "goto" ran you over? You should not
- have been staring at the "breaks" and "continues" thru those x-windows
- (peeping is illegal you know), you should have been paying attention
- to the road, next time you might not be as lucky and a "mid-function"
- return might hit you! I understand that when you are riding in your
- van full of state variables, redundant tests, duplicate code and added
- complextity you might not be even able to see more than a couple of
- yards away, anyhow remember to be very carefull when driving around
- in those conditions, you might even be able to get one of those signs
- for the handicapped. :-)
-
- Anyhow, you can't really do nothing about it, nobody is going to outlaw
- any of these, nobody is going to stop using them either, even if you
- don't like them (we like them), so learn to live with them.
-
- >In software engineering, we have rules, but no cops. (And I don't
- >want any cops either). So "real good programmers" sometimes feel that
- >the rules don't apply to them. We average types suffer at their hands.
-
- The problem is that when you say "we have rules" you mean "I have rules",
- you have your rules and I have my rules. I don't feel guilty when I
- use breaks, continues, returns, gotos or when I decide that a state
- variable makes more sense than any of these. If you don't like using
- some of these, that is ok also, go ahead and don't use them, don't be
- afraid, I won't send my cops to look at your code.
-
- Textbook software engineering for computer science students is not
- exactly how things work in the real world. If somebody in the real world
- is making you "suffer at their hands" with good old C code, you can always
- find yourself a project that is being done strictly under your rules.
- If you can't find one, then you might be more tolerant of all the
- programmers that have not seen the light and give them some space.
- Please don't suffer too much if one of them puts a "break" in one of
- your statefull loops.
-
- Ramon Pantin
-