Identifying C Programmers by Their Reaction to 'GOTO Considered Harmful'
Description
A four-panel comic in a cartoon Greek/Roman battlefield style. In the first panel, two spear-carrying soldiers stand on a hill surrounded by fallen comrades, and one asks 'HOW DO WE KNOW IF THEY'RE C PROGRAMMERS?'. In the second panel the other soldier shouts 'GOTO CONSIDERED HARMFUL' across the field of bodies (artist credits '@SpaceboyCantLo' and '@THEFATBITCOIN' visible). In the third panel, several of the 'dead' soldiers spring back to life to argue, with speech labels reading 'skill issue', 'it's useful', 'it's clean', and 'Stop crying, use Python instead'. In the fourth panel one revived soldier impales the heckler who suggested Python. The meme references Edsger Dijkstra's famous 1968 letter 'Go To Statement Considered Harmful' and the enduring holy war among C programmers who defend goto for things like kernel-style error-handling cleanup paths, while also mocking language-war flame responses
Comments
8Comment deleted
Dijkstra declared goto harmful in 1968; C programmers have spent the 57 years since jumping straight to the rebuttal - no intermediate control flow required
The guards didn't need a debugger; they just followed the unstructured control flow to the survivors.
goto @ it's clean Comment deleted
It is. Look up C code. Without it C code is a nightmare. Comment deleted
Just mention Rust, will be the same as on this picture Comment deleted
omg Rust mentioned Comment deleted
bruh rust mentioned Comment deleted
HOLY SHIT!! IT'S RUST MENTIONED!! ... What does that even mean? I only know Java. Comment deleted