I absolutely concur with John's conclusion:
Academia, the elites or otherwise, saw the 'horrors' of goto and declared it
an evil that was to be expunged from any language. The toolbox was
diminished by this action in my humble opinion. Yet for us QBasic guys we
still employ it. Boy does it get one out of a jam. Mimics real life doesn't
it?
I regard 'goto as the programming equivalent of the adjustable spanner.
There are often better tools to use, using it wrongly can get you into
real trouble, but it's rare to find a hacker who's not used it (just as
mo hardware guy will use an adjustable spanner when there are better
tools available, but I don't know of a serious hardware hacker who
doesn't have one in the toolbox...)
-tony