From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,86fd56abf3579c34 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Theodore Dennison Subject: Re: State machines and Goto's (was Re: Should internet support software be written in Ada?) Date: 1995/04/06 Message-ID: <3m0nv5$67l@theopolis.orl.mmc.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 100939385 references: <3kaksj$iur@isnews.calpoly.edu> <3ki9t8$c8l@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> <3ldnmh$hi5@maple.enet.net> <3line1$ma0@nic.umass.edu> <3lt00o$rgf@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 organization: IPL InterNetNews site x-url: news:3lt00o$rgf@gnat.cs.nyu.edu mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Mozilla 1.1b2 (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.3_U1 sun4c) Date: 1995-04-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >Here is the basic issue with finite state machines. A normal picture >of a finite state machine is a spaghetti diagram with circles for >states and arrows for transitions. Which is why people today tend to design using structure charts. >Please be clear, I am not saying that anyone who completely avoids >gotos is incompetenmt, not at all. I am saying that it is wrong to think >that it is appropriate to visit this absolute rule on competent >programmers. I have now worked under 3 different Ada coding standards. Every one of them had a "no goto's" rule. Since I'm currently editing our next coding standard, perhaps someone could suggest a replacement rule? It should be very specific about what allowable and unallowable goto's are. We need something that our software quality folks can enforce. The rule can make NO assumptions about the competency of the programmer, as we won't find out the truth on that matter until it is too late. T.E.D. (structured programming mafioso)