Every time I see a "considered harmful" title, I groan and think of this. It's a meme at this point, and really detracts from the value of the article for me.
Is There An Alternative to “Considered Harmful” Essays?
Absolutely. The most basic alternative is not to write them at all, but to instead engage in reasoned debate without resorting to dogmatic assertions or distractive tactics (e.g., ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments). In those cases where some sort of document is needed outside of the debate, there are a number of superior alternatives.
* A description of the strong and weak aspects of one’s own point of view; we might call it a “benefits and weaknesses of” essay. This is a positive contribution to the debate, and allows the debating parties to take the best parts of each view and more readily find a compromise solution. Knowing both the benefits and weaknesses of all views makes it easier to cover the weaknesses in one view with the strengths in another.
* A description of the strong and weak aspects of another point of view; we might call it a “perceived benefits and weaknesses of” essay. This allows the author to evaluate what he believes to be good and bad about another point of view. Authors must be careful to avoid slanting the piece too far toward the weaknesses, lest they end up writing a “considered harmful” essay by another name.
* An essay that compares different viewpoints in the same piece; in other words, a “compare and contrast” essay. These essays attempt to objectively evaluate multiple views and point out how they are both alike and dissimilar, thus highlighting both common ground and areas that need work. The benefits of such essays are fairly self-evident.
The purpose of the "Considered Harmful" headline was, and always has been, to draw attention. And it's frequently been successful, both in the original attempt and here as well.
My grief with this sort of "considered harmful" essay or blog post is that it is being applied to such concrete subjects as Swift code migration, not the almost philosophical objects as the original GOTO. "Considered harmful" essays should be timeless to do service to the concept.