considered harmful

2 definitions found

considered harmful - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  considered harmful
  
     Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968 "Communications of
     the ACM", "Goto Statement Considered Harmful", fired the first
     salvo in the structured programming wars.  Amusingly, the ACM
     considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently harmful that it
     will (by policy) no longer print an article taking so
     assertive a position against a coding practice.  In the
     ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and
     parodies have borne titles of the form "X considered Y".  The
     structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the
     realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles
     has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.
  
     [Jargon File]
  

considered harmful - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  considered harmful
   adj.
  
     [very common] Edsger W. Dijkstra's note in the March 1968
     Communications of the ACM, Goto Statement Considered Harmful, fired
     the first salvo in the structured programming wars (text at
     http://www.acm.org/classics/). As it turns out, the title under which
     the letter appeared was actually supplied by CACM's editor, Niklaus
     Wirth. Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony
     sufficiently harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print an
     article taking so assertive a position against a coding practice.
     (Years afterwards, a contrary view was uttered in a CACM letter
     called, inevitably, `Goto considered harmful' considered harmful''.
  In
     the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious papers and
     parodies have borne titles of the form X considered Y. The
     structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the realization
     that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has remained as a
     persistent minor in-joke (the `considered silly' found at various
     places in this lexicon is related).