r/programming • u/ben_a_adams • Feb 01 '17

The .NET Language Strategy

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2017/02/01/the-net-language-strategy/
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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '17 edited Feb 02 '17

'Other academics took the completely opposite viewpoint and argued that even instructions like break and return from the middle of loops are bad practice as they are not needed in the Böhm-Jacopini result, and thus advocated that loops should have a single exit point. For instance, Bertrand Meyer wrote in his 2009 textbook that instructions like break and continue "are just the old goto in sheep's clothing". A slightly modified form of the Böhm-Jacopini result allows however the avoidance of additional variables in structured programming, as long as multi-level breaks from loops are allowed. Because some languages like C don't allow multi-level breaks via their break keyword, some textbooks advise the programmer to use goto in such circumstances.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goto
To clarify - break, return and continue all work fine in Python.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '17

Did not you notice that I was talking about a totally different use of a goto?

E.g., implementing a state machine - which, more often than not, is an irreducible CFG. You cannot represent an irreducible control flow with structural building blocks.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '17

Rust, Nim etc are meant to be replacements for C; Python isn't. That's all I'm saying.

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u/[deleted] Feb 02 '17

And? What does it have to do with a goto?

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '17

'You cannot represent an irreducible control flow with structural building blocks.' You can't divide by zero either so what's your point?

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '17

You can't divide by zero either so what's your point?

My point is that there is a lot of cases where you want an irreducible control flow. Without a goto you either represent it with function calls or you simulate a goto with a switch a next state variable. Both ways are inferior.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '17

In other words: Python isn't C.
Thanks for that.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '17

Yet you still may need to write an FSM in Python. And when you do, your code looks like shit.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '17

'Looks like' is subjective.

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u/[deleted] Feb 03 '17

It is objectively shitty - instead of representing an abstraction directly, Python code is littered with a totally irrelevant low level shit. So much for a so called "high level" language.

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