Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On 11/21/24 10:54 PM, rbowman wrote:

On Thu, 21 Nov 2024 20:31:11 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
 

    Even today, Free Pascal supports GOTO ... but you LABEL the
    destination point so you don't have to worry about changing line
    numbers like with older versions of BASIC. FORTRAN did, some versions
    still do, support I think two version of GO TO ... labeled and
    'calculated'. Sometimes you just CAN'T cleanly structure what you
    want - and GOTO is a secret way out of some deep deep if-then's and
    while's and such.

 The computer goto was declared 'obsolescent' in F95 in favor of 'case' but
afaik it still will compile.
 Put enough lipstick on the pig and you wind up with a vtable.

   Heh !!! :-)
   Well, I don't see FORTRAN as a "pig" really - a totally
   useful, still well-supported, lang. Still do little FORTRAN
   utils just to stay in practice.
   Anyway, sometimes you have to nest/flag deep if/then's
   and whiles and such so deep that there's really no
   clean escape in a special or exception condition. This
   is where a 'bail-out' GOTO or two can make yer code
   a LOT simpler/smaller. Not 101% aesthetic, but it works
   very well. Use conservatively.
   Ultimately you judge code by what it DOES - less by
   to how it "looks". It's all "working the machine".