11 May
2005
11 May
'05
7:37 p.m.
On Wed, 11 May 2005, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
I miss GOTO. It was unnecessarily expunged from the
programmmer's toolbox
by elitist academics.
Most particularly Dijkstra.
But you might enjoy some of his other statements, such as:
<QUOTE>
FORTRAN --"the infantile disorder"--, by now nearly 20 years old, is
hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind
today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
PL/I --"the fatal disease"-- belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that
have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offence.
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the
future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new
generation of coding bums.
</QUOTE>