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by rrradical 3627 days ago
It's true. Personally, I took that to be a bit tongue in cheek. I would compare it to "GOTO Considered Harmful"-- where the author wants you to imagine a world without such a technique in order to expand your abilities. (Even though there are probably edge cases where such usage is justifiable.)
1 comments

The stance is rather different though - "GOTO Considered Harmful" as a phrase is both inviting a discussion and making a limited statement. "Destroy all ifs" is definitive; the argument is over at the end of the phrase and there will be no negotiation or concessions. I know that this is trivial in this case, but I think it would help discourse in the world generally if we could move away from this kind of position taking and offer our opinions more gently.

As a community we should reward more nuanced and open statements.

Absolutely.

Simply replacing "ifs" with anything else.

I think it's clear how this is simply juvenile hyperbolic invective.

"Ifs considered suboptimal" carries the spirit of Dijkstra and the general argument of the anti if folks.
That would work