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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Is there an ADA analogue to the C++ continue statement?
Date: 1997/09/21
Message-ID: <dewar.874848062@merv>#1/1
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References: <01bcc32e$350b5ba0$6409868b@gateway> <5vqm61$fu2$1@cf01.edf.fr>
 <dewar.874665174@merv> <3422F037.41CA@lmco.com> <3423AF1B.5152@i.b.m.net>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-09-21T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


William Dale said

<<> [I'd suspect a troll for flames was going on here but I have great
>  respect for Roberts' previous posts ]>>


Suggesting that goto has useful applications in some cases should NOT
be a troll, since there should be no sensible reason for people to
take offence at the suggestion, but in a typical display of
huper-correctism, it is quite true that a lot of people in the
programming area have distorted the very reasonable rules about not
misusing gotos into the entirely silly rule of abolishing them 
completely.

I suppose if your programmers are so incompetent that they cannot tell
the difference, then such arbitrary rules may help, but in the long run,
there is no magic cure for incompetence to be found in little books of
mindless rules.

One of the nice things about AQ&S is that it clearly understands its role
as a source of guidelines, rather than absolute rules. 

I have no objection to absolute style rules where we are taling about
stylistic issues which have no impact on expressive power (e.g. whether
to indent 3 or 4 characters). Here absolute rules to ensure conformity
are quite appropriate.

But all rules that ban a particular language feature across the board
are misguided (and I really do intend this as an absolute statement).
A feature is in the language because the designers thought it was useful,
and an international standards group unanimously agreed with the design.
If you think a feature is so dangerous that it should never ever be used,
then most probably there is something that you don't understand.