Critically Analyzing Dijkstra’s Go To Statement Considered Harmful
Recognizing the argument, determining the types of reasoning used, and identifying logical fallacies are important aspects to critically analyzing information. The paragraphs that follow provide a critical analysis of Edsger Dijkstra’s famous letter, “Go To Statement Considered Harmful”.
Critical Analysis
Recognizing the Argument
In 1968, Edsger Dijkstra wrote a letter to the editor of Journal of the ACM entitled “Go To Statement Considered Harmful”. In his letter, he insisted that the future of programming would require a structural approach. Prior to this time, programmer’s use of the go to statement was conventional. Dijkstra argued that the usage of the go to statement was problematic because it allowed the program to control the progress of the process by arbitrarily jumping from one location within the process to another. The functionality of the go to statement obscures the ability of the programmer to analyze and verify the accuracy of a program. IBM’s information center describes, “The goto statement causes your program to unconditionally transfer control to the statement associated with the label specified on the goto statement” (IBM, 2004). IBM’s information center has a parallel view of the actions of the go to statement that Dijkstra presented, IBM explains, “Because the goto statement can interfere with the normal sequence of processing, it makes a program more difficult to read and maintain” (IBM, 2004).
Dijkstra’s main points of his letter involved the difficulties that arise for a programmer with excessive use of the go to statement. He urges his colleagues that the uncontrolled use of the go to statement is detrimental to the profession...
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