'goto" gone from computer languages or is it!

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Antonio Carlini may have mentioned these words:
>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.

<MODE="DevilsAdvocate">

Couple of things:

1) In a few instances, we should pick up those "coding sticks" and beat the 
living *$&#^@~( out of a few people who should have never been allowed to 
code in the first place... ;^>

2) Until we're all clones from a single gene base (and believe you me, you 
don't wanna be *my* clone!!!), the goal of "perfection" is unattainable. 
I'm not saying that we shouldn't *try*, for that will give us tools better 
than what we have now -- but absolute perfection will not be the same for 
all people.

Oh, and 3) If "perfection" actually did exist, I doubt any one of us on 
this list could afford it... ;-)

>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.

Gonna make sure I eat my vegetables, too? ;-)

What happens when the specification itself is wrong, or ambiguous, or 
someone writes a virus that infects the "perfection checker" program?

I'd put a lot more faith into 10 people looking over each other's shoulders 
than 1 computer program.

>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!

What happens if the only way to attain "programming perfection" is through 
the use of gotos? ;-P

</MODE>

It's a grumpy Friday the 13th... I'll crawl back into my hole now.
;-)

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | A new truth in advertising slogan
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy...
zmerch at 30below.com          |                         ...in oxymoron!"