Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!pprg.unm.edu!hc!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: The "evil" GOTO (more than a week of pure drek)
Message-ID: <13765@lanl.gov>
Date: 17 May 89 00:30:43 GMT
References: <24330@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 27

From article <24330@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, by ked@garnet.berkeley.edu (Earl H. Kinmonth):
}>(Definitions -  structured: code developed by stepwise refinement using
}>(ultimately) whatever low-level programming tools that are available.
}>"structured": eliminating GOTOs from code, even where the GOTO is the
}>most efficient method and is _AS_ readible and the proposed alternative.)
} 
} As an historian, it is interesting to watch people in an allegedly hard
} and objective "science" make statements that are essentially
} ideological. Presumably even someone who is only computer literate can
} recognize the definitions of "structured" given here as essentially
} ideological.

As a non-historian, it is interesting to watch people who are allegedly
historians make such obviously unchecked remarks.  The description I gave
of the meanings of 'structured' is an accurate account of the change in
the use of the term.  To be sure, the _new_ meaning of the term is almost
purely ideological.  Therefore, I suppose, pointing out the historical
shift in the meaning is also ideological - _BUT_ the meaning of the
term _DID_ shift.  (And, if you'd bothered to check the literature on
the subject, you would have seen that my original description is an
accurate characterization of the change.)

} Earl H. Kinmonth
} 	a decade of C programming, and I've yet to use a goto since I
} 	gave up FORTRAN for Lent.

Incidently, if I'm not allowed to make ideological remarks, why are you?