Considered harmful

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In computer science and related disciplines, "considered harmful" is a phrase popularly used in the titles of diatribes and other critical essays. It originates with Edsger Dijkstra's letter "Go To Statement Considered Harmful"Template:Ref, published in the March 1968 Communications of the ACM, in which he criticized the excessive use of the GOTO statement in programming languages of day and advocated structured programming instead. Structured programming is not as widely debated in contemporary computer science, but the pithy and adaptable phrase "X considered harmful" (actually the invention of the ACM editor Niklaus Wirth, and not Dijkstra) continues to be used to indicate that an article contains controversial and strongly asserted views.

Frank Rubin published a criticism of Dijkstra's letter in the March 1987 Communications of the ACM titled "'GOTO Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful". Donald Moore et al. published a reply in the May 1987 CACM titled "'"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?". (Dijkstra's own response to this controversy was thankfully titled "On a somewhat disappointing correspondence"Template:Ref.)

Some variants with replacement adjectives ("considered silly", etc.) have been noted in hacker jargonTemplate:Ref. The phrase is also occasionally capitalized for effect.

See also

• Snowclone

References

1. Template:Note Dijkstra (1968), Go To Statement Considered Harmful, Communications of the ACM, March 1968
2. Template:Note Dijkstra (1987), On a somewhat disappointing correspondence
3. Template:Note Raymond et al, The Jargon File

External links

• "Considered Harmful" Essays Considered Harmful
• Creative Commons -NC Licenses Considered Harmful (Angela Beesley)ko:Considered harmful