[ba-unrev-talk] [Re: Dijkstra]
At 12:04 Uhr -0700 09.08.2002, Eric Armstrong wrote:
>To this I would add the phrase "... considered harmful" which appeared
>in
>the title of a letter to the editor of CACM entitled "Go To Statement
>Considered Harmful." [CACM V11 N3, March 1968, p. 147. This is
>available
>at http://www.acm.org/classics/oct95/] In retrospect it's not clear to
>me
>whether the title was Dijkstra's or was provided by the editor. (01)
I consider myself lucky. Dijkstra gave a talk last year in Bonn, which I attended. Dijkstra told us the following: (02)
Finally a short story for the record. In 1968, the Communications of the ACM published a text of mine under the title "The goto statement considered harmful", which in later years would be most frequently referenced, regrettably, however, often by authors who had seen no more than its title. This text became a cornerstone of my fame by becoming a template: we would see all sorts of articles under the title "X considered harmful" for almost any X, including one title "Dijkstra considered harmful". But what had happened? I had submitted a paper under the title "A case against the goto statement", which, in order to speed up its publication, the editor had changed into a "Letter to the Editor", and in the process he had given it a new title of his own invention! The editor was Niklaus Wirth. (03)
[EDW 1308: What led to "Notes on Structured Programming"]
cf. http://www.mprove.de/script/01/sdm/ (04)
Matthias (05)
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