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"Go To statement considered harmful"

— Edsger W. Dijkstra

January 1, 1970

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Added on April 10, 2026

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Designers Computer scientists Inventors Software engineers Programmers from the Netherlands

Original Language: English

Sources

Dijkstra sent a paper to Communications of the ACM under the title of "A Case against the GO TO Statement" (EWD215, PDF here). However the editor Niklaus Wirth decided to publish it as a letter to the editor to speed up publication. Wirth changed the title to "The goto statement considered harmful". Dijkstra explains it himself in EWD1308 (see near the end of the article).

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra

Dijkstra sent a paper to Communications of the ACM under the title of "A Case against the GO TO Statement" (EWD215, PDF here). However the editor Niklaus Wirth decided to publish it as a letter to the editor to speed up publication. Wirth changed the title to "The goto statement considered harmful". Dijkstra explains it himself in EWD1308 (see near the end of the article).