Monthly Archives: February 2020

First, Consider no Harmful.

Posted on 2020-02-27 by Graham

Yesterday, we observed that the goal of considering the go to statement harmful was so that a programmer could write a correct program and have done with it. We noticed that this is never how computering works: many programs are … Continue reading →

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The unreasonable ineffectiveness of considering things harmful

Posted on 2020-02-26 by Graham

Dijkstra didn’t claim to consider the go to statement harmful, not in those words. The title of his letter to CACM was provided by the editor, Niklaus Wirth, who did such a great job that the entire industry knows that … Continue reading →

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Empowered free software

Posted on 2020-02-11 by Graham

Free and open source software has traditionally been defined as the opposite of something else: proprietary (or commercially-licensed) software. That’s particularly obvious in the name of the GNU project, which calls itself “Not UNIX” – a popular AT&T-owned commercial software … Continue reading →

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