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To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>
Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: any chance of 2.6.0-test*? 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 12 Jan 2003 12:33:37 PST."
             <Pine.LNX.4.44.0301121231010.14031-100000@home.transmeta.com> 
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 11:54:59 +0100
From: Horst von Brand <brand@jupiter.cs.uni-dortmund.de>
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
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Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com> said:
> On 12 Jan 2003, Robert Love wrote:
> > On Sun, 2003-01-12 at 15:22, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > > No, you've been brainwashed by CS people who thought that Niklaus
> > > Wirth actually knew what he was talking about. He didn't. He
> > > doesn't have a frigging clue.
> > 
> > I thought Edsger Dijkstra coined the "gotos are evil" bit in his
> > structured programming push?

> Yeah, he did, but he's dead, and we shouldn't talk ill of the dead. So 
> these days I can only rant about Niklaus Wirth, who took the "structured 
> programming" thing and enforced it in his languages (Pascal and Modula-2), 
> and thus forced his evil on untold generations of poor CS students who had 
> to learn langauges that weren't actually useful for real work.

You did not live through the horror that was FORTRAN IV, I learned
programming in it (no structure except DO, a primitive for). Sure, Pascal
strictures are overkill, but in a sense they were needed to implant a bit
of structure into the mess that usually came before.

> (Yeah, yeah, most _practical_ versions of Pascal ended up having all the 
> stuff necessary to break structure, but as you may be able to tell, I was 
> one of the unwashed masses who had to write in "standard Pascal" in my 
> youth. I'm scarred for life).

And you do break structure only when necessary, so the dosis of Pascal did
you some good after all ;-)
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513
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