'goto" gone from computer languages or is it!

[Antonio Carlini]

John Hogerhuis wrote:
> Agreed, but nor should anyone really care about provable
> correctness, right? Engineering is about making things that
> are practically useful, i.e. "good enough"-- we're not
> designing stained glass windows for the Church of Reason,
> we're simply making and maintaining tools to solve todays
> problems more efficiently than if those tools were not
> available. 

Certainly we should not immediately drop our coding sticks
and not touch them again until we _know_ we have attained
perfection. But I disagree strongly that we should not strive
to reach that goal.

If we had a mechanism now to create provably correct
programs (that met specifications that we could be
sure meant what we intended them to mean) - and
further assuming that use of such a mechanism did
not impose excessive cost or efficiency burdens etc, -
then I think we would have to use them for all
serious programs.

Given the choice, I'd prefer the programs I use to 
work perfectly rather than imperfectly - and I'd prefer
to spend the time I program at work creating correct
code rather than being dragged back to fix yesterday's
mistake.

I'm more than willing to trade an occasional goto for that!

Antonio

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Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org