Considered harmful: Difference between revisions
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Anything here not about Dijkstra's paper is either OR, or sourced to a blog...This "phrasal template" as the article calls it, doesn't seem to be particularly notable on its own, so I'm just redirecting it to the same place that "goto considered harmful" redirects, as it seems the most probably search target Tags: New redirect Reverted |
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#REDIRECT [[Goto#Criticism]] |
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{{short description|Phrase used in titles of diatribes and other critical essays}} |
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{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2019}} |
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[[File:Achievements considered harmful.jpg|thumb|"Achievements considered harmful?" presentation at the 2010 [[Game Developers Conference]]]] |
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'''Considered harmful''' is a part of a [[phrasal template]] "X considered harmful". {{as of|2009}}, its [[snowclone]]s have been used in the titles of at least 65 critical essays in [[computer science]] and related disciplines.<ref>{{cite web |
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| url = http://jeff.over.bz/?04_Miscellaneous/03_Considered_Harmful |
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| title = Miscellaneous - Considered Harmful |
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| accessdate = August 17, 2009 |
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| archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20090503144621/http://jeff.over.bz/?04_Miscellaneous%2F03_Considered_Harmful |
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| archivedate = 2009-05-03 |
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| url-status = dead |
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}}</ref> |
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Its use in this context originated with a 1968 letter by [[Edsger Dijkstra]] published as "Go To Statement Considered Harmful". |
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==History== |
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''Considered harmful'' was already a journalistic cliché used in headlines, well before the Dijkstra article, as in, for example, the headline over a letter published in 1949 in ''[[The New York Times]]'': "Rent Control Controversy / Enacting Now of Hasty Legislation Considered Harmful".<ref name="liberman">{{cite web | url = http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004675.html | author=[[Mark Liberman]]|title = Language Log: Considered harmful | date = April 8, 2008 | accessdate = August 17, 2009}}</ref> |
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''Considered harmful'' was popularized among computer scientists by [[Edsger Dijkstra]]'s letter "Go To Statement Considered Harmful",<ref name="dijkstra1968">{{cite journal |
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| author = [[Edsger Dijkstra]] |
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| date=March 1968 |
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| title = Go To Statement Considered Harmful |
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| journal = Communications of the ACM |
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| volume = 11 |
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| issue = 3 |
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| pages = 147–148 |
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| doi = 10.1145/362929.362947 |
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| s2cid=17469809 |
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| url = https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.pdf |
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| quote=The unbridled use of the go to statement has as an immediate consequence that it becomes terribly hard to find a meaningful set of coordinates in which to describe the process progress. ... The go to statement as it stands is just too primitive, it is too much an invitation to make a mess of one's program.}}</ref><ref name="ewd215">{{Cite EWD|215}}</ref> |
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published in the March 1968 ''Communications of the [[Association for Computing Machinery|ACM]]'' (CACM), in which he criticized the excessive use of the [[GOTO]] [[statement (programming)|statement]] in [[programming language]]s of the day and advocated [[structured programming]] instead.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://david.tribble.com/text/goto.html | title = Goto Statement Considered Harmful: A Retrospective | author = David R. Tribble |date=February 2005}}</ref> The original title of the letter, as submitted to CACM, was "A Case Against the Goto Statement", but CACM editor [[Niklaus Wirth]] changed the title to "Goto Statement Considered Harmful".<ref>{{cite EWD|1308|What led to "Notes on Structured Programming"}} (June, 2001)</ref> Regarding this new title, [[Donald Knuth]] quipped that "[[Eiichi Goto|Dr. Goto]] cheerfully complained that he was always being eliminated."<ref>{{Citation|first=Yasumasa|last=Kanada|title=Events and Sightings: An obituary of Eiichi Goto|page=92|journal=IEEE Annals of the History of Computing|volume=27|issue=3|year=2005|doi=10.1109/MAHC.2005.37|s2cid=675701}}</ref> |
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Frank Rubin published a criticism of Dijkstra's letter in the March 1987 CACM where it appeared under the title "'GOTO Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful".<ref name="rubin87goto">{{cite journal|author=Frank Rubin |date=March 1987 |url=http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/ParaMount/papers/rubin87goto.pdf |title="GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful |journal=Communications of the ACM |volume=30 |issue=3 |pages=195–196 |doi=10.1145/214748.315722 |s2cid=6853038 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090320002214/http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/ParaMount/papers/rubin87goto.pdf |archivedate=March 20, 2009 }}</ref> The May 1987 CACM printed further replies, both for and against, under the title "'"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?".<ref name="acm_may87">{{cite journal |author1=Donald Moore |author2=Chuck Musciano |author3=Michael J. Liebhaber |author4=Steven F. Lott |author5=Lee Starr |date=May 1987 | url = http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/1987/5/10097-acm-forum/abstract |format=PDF| title = " 'GOTO Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful? | journal = Communications of the ACM | volume = 30 | issue = 5 | pages = 351–355 | doi = 10.1145/22899.315729 |s2cid=42951740 }}</ref> Dijkstra's own response to this controversy was titled ''On a Somewhat Disappointing Correspondence''.<ref name="ewd1009">{{cite EWD|1009|On a Somewhat Disappointing Correspondence}} (May, 1987)</ref> |
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==References== |
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{{Reflist}} |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Considered Harmful}} |
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[[Category:History of computing]] |
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[[Category:Snowclones]] |
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[[Category:Edsger W. Dijkstra]] |
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[[Category:Computer humor]] |
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Revision as of 15:39, 10 December 2022
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