[kbenson]

> There is no "structured programming" with spitbol. No curly braces. Gotos get the job done. Personally, I do not mind gotos. It feels closer to the reality of how a computer operates.

That's because it is closer, as I'm sure you know, since you stated your fondness for assembly languages. I even like them for specific, limited tasks (advanced loop control). That said, I think preferring them over more "modern" constructs such as if/while/for is sort of like disparaging all those new gas powered carriages, because you can get around just fine with your horse to power your carriage, thankyouverymuch. There are very good reasons to approach most uses of goto with skepticism.

[ploxiln]

I don't think that's a good metaphor. There are no actual horses inside any gasoline (or electric) engine. But there are gotos behind many (though not all) of these modern constructs...

[kbenson]

There's actually a lot more implied by the metaphor than just goto and constructs built upon it. It's about the art and science of programming, and advancements in the field. I specifically didn't say car or automobile because I wanted to evoke the feeling that the "new" thing being shunned is actually itself far behind the current state of the art. For loops and if blocks aren't very new and shiny either. You know what is (for some relative value of "new" that includes coming back into prominence or finally gaining some traction)? Static code analysis. Typing concepts beyond what C offered. IDEs and tooling infrastructures to assist development. Languages that support formal proofs.

Goto is essential, it's the glue that holds the instruction set together. That said, we must not fetishize it, just as we must not fetishize items of the past that are largely superseded by what they helped create. To do so slows us down, and we fail to achieve what we otherwise could. We must not forget them either, they have their places, and to do so would also slow us down.

[MaulingMonkey]

> But there are gotos behind many (though not all) of these modern constructs...

I'd argue that e.g. an x86 LOOP instruction is far more equivalent to a do/while loop than a goto. Most of the jump instructions I see in my disassembly aren't unconditional like goto is - if anything, car engines are closer to horses in what they accomplish than, say, jnz is to goto! Even jmp certainly doesn't used named labels, as any goto worth it's salt will use - instead you'll see absolute or relative address offsets.

>> Personally, I do not mind gotos. It feels closer to the reality of how a computer operates.

There's a time and place to get close to the hardware, but I've never felt that goto got me meaningfully closer. Of course, my first and primary exposure to GOTO was in BASIC - where it was interpreted.

You want to get close to the hardware? Play with intrinsics. Open up the disassembly and poke at it with a profiler. Find out if your algorithm manages to execute in mostly L1 cache, or if it's spilling all the way out into RAM fetches. Figure out where you need to prefetch, where you're stalling, where your cycles are being spent. Diagnose and fix some false sharing. Write your own (dis)assembler - did you know there's typically no actual nop instruction? You simply emit e.g. xchg eax, eax, which happens to do nothing of note, and label it "nop" for clarity.

IMO, you'll have more time to do these things when embracing the advantages that structured programming can provide. Of course, I may be speaking to the choir, at least on that last point.

[spc476]

NOP is most certainly a NOP on modern x86 CPUs. Yes, the encoding matches what would be XCHG EAX,EAX (or AX,AX or RAX,RAX) but it hasn't been that for quite some time as it could create a pipeline stall waiting for [RE]AX to be ready for the following instruction.

As for JNE not being a GOTO, it most certainly is. It just so happens to only happen under certain circumstances (along with the other conditional jumps, and yes, that's how they are described). Compare:

    IF X <= 45 GOTO THERE

with

    CMP EAX,45
    JLE THERE

Not much of a difference if you ask me. Also, the LOOP instruction is more of a FOR loop than a DO/WHILE, as the ECX register is decremented as part of the instruction.

And let me assure you, when writing assembly, you almost always use labels. A disassembly will show you the absolute/relative address because that's all it has to go by.

[rawdisk]

Gotos in spitbol can be conditional or unconditional.

[101914]

I have a question: In his analogy, what represents the hardware and what represents the software? Wouldn't the change from horses to combustion engine be a change in hardware? And software might be represented by something like the reins or a gas pedal?

[kbenson]

On both sides it's technology and advancement of the status quo. More explicitly, it's programming and personal transportation.

Oh, and my rant wasn't aimed at you, per-se, but the statement about goto which I expanded in isolation to a fictional point of view. That point of view may or may not have any relation to how you feel about programming and goto, I have no idea.