Infocom on PDP-11

[Fred Cisin]

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>