Considered harmful is a part of a
phrasal template "X considered harmful". As of 2009[update], its
snowclones have been used in the titles of at least 65 critical essays in
computer science and related disciplines.[1]
Its use in this context originated with a 1968 letter by
Edsger Dijkstra published as "Go To Statement Considered Harmful".
History
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".[2]
Considered harmful was popularized among computer scientists by
Edsger Dijkstra's letter "Go To Statement Considered Harmful",[3][4]
published in the March 1968 Communications of the
ACM (CACM), in which he criticized the excessive use of the
GOTOstatement in
programming languages of the day and advocated
structured programming instead.[5] 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".[6] Regarding this new title,
Donald Knuth quipped that "
Dr. Goto cheerfully complained that he was always being eliminated."[7]
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.[8] The May 1987 CACM printed further replies, both for and against, under the title '"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?.[9] Dijkstra's own response to this controversy was titled On a Somewhat Disappointing Correspondence.[10]
Bruce A. Martin (November 15–19, 1976). "Letter O Considered Harmful". proposal considered by X3J3 members. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY: X3J3: ANSI
Fortran Standards Committee. (Full proposal text was included in post-meeting distribution; see
summary.)
This article is the namesake of a Cat-v.org Random Contrarian Insurgent Organization, which maintains a directory of "considered harmful" articles and hosts some
Plan 9-related software. (Rob Pike was a main figure in the creation of Plan 9 and wrote extensively on bad designs found in UNIX.)[11]
Eliot Lear; Erik Fair; Dave Crocker; Thomas Kessler (July 1994). RFC 1627: Network 10 Considered Harmful (Some Practices Shouldn't be Codified) (Technical report). IETF.
doi:10.17487/rfc1627.
CA Kent; JC Mogul (January 1995). "Fragmentation Considered Harmful". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review. 25: 75–87.
doi:
10.1145/205447.205456.
S2CID207997774.
Kapser, Cory; Godfrey, Michael W. (October 2006). "Cloning Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful. 2006 13th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering. pp. 19–28.
doi:
10.1109/WCRE.2006.1.
^Edsger Dijkstra (March 1968).
"Go To Statement Considered Harmful"(PDF). Communications of the ACM. 11 (3): 147–148.
doi:
10.1145/362929.362947.
S2CID17469809. 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.
^Kanada, Yasumasa (2005), "Events and Sightings: An obituary of Eiichi Goto", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 27 (3): 92,
doi:
10.1109/MAHC.2005.37,
S2CID675701
Considered harmful is a part of a
phrasal template "X considered harmful". As of 2009[update], its
snowclones have been used in the titles of at least 65 critical essays in
computer science and related disciplines.[1]
Its use in this context originated with a 1968 letter by
Edsger Dijkstra published as "Go To Statement Considered Harmful".
History
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".[2]
Considered harmful was popularized among computer scientists by
Edsger Dijkstra's letter "Go To Statement Considered Harmful",[3][4]
published in the March 1968 Communications of the
ACM (CACM), in which he criticized the excessive use of the
GOTOstatement in
programming languages of the day and advocated
structured programming instead.[5] 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".[6] Regarding this new title,
Donald Knuth quipped that "
Dr. Goto cheerfully complained that he was always being eliminated."[7]
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.[8] The May 1987 CACM printed further replies, both for and against, under the title '"GOTO Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful' Considered Harmful?.[9] Dijkstra's own response to this controversy was titled On a Somewhat Disappointing Correspondence.[10]
Bruce A. Martin (November 15–19, 1976). "Letter O Considered Harmful". proposal considered by X3J3 members. Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY: X3J3: ANSI
Fortran Standards Committee. (Full proposal text was included in post-meeting distribution; see
summary.)
This article is the namesake of a Cat-v.org Random Contrarian Insurgent Organization, which maintains a directory of "considered harmful" articles and hosts some
Plan 9-related software. (Rob Pike was a main figure in the creation of Plan 9 and wrote extensively on bad designs found in UNIX.)[11]
Eliot Lear; Erik Fair; Dave Crocker; Thomas Kessler (July 1994). RFC 1627: Network 10 Considered Harmful (Some Practices Shouldn't be Codified) (Technical report). IETF.
doi:10.17487/rfc1627.
CA Kent; JC Mogul (January 1995). "Fragmentation Considered Harmful". ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review. 25: 75–87.
doi:
10.1145/205447.205456.
S2CID207997774.
Kapser, Cory; Godfrey, Michael W. (October 2006). "Cloning Considered Harmful" Considered Harmful. 2006 13th Working Conference on Reverse Engineering. pp. 19–28.
doi:
10.1109/WCRE.2006.1.
^Edsger Dijkstra (March 1968).
"Go To Statement Considered Harmful"(PDF). Communications of the ACM. 11 (3): 147–148.
doi:
10.1145/362929.362947.
S2CID17469809. 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.
^Kanada, Yasumasa (2005), "Events and Sightings: An obituary of Eiichi Goto", IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 27 (3): 92,
doi:
10.1109/MAHC.2005.37,
S2CID675701