Re: Well, this article'll cause some arguments, eh?
I'm ambivalent about gotos but I do have an antipathy towards 'cute' code and that sample definitely belongs in the cute camp. This kind of coding indicates structural issues so its time to back out and consider an alternative way to implement the required functionality.
I used to have a pet theory about coding issues and bugs which roughly summarized suggested that the reason why code went pear shaped was because of most programmers' inability to type. That is once they'd put a chunk of code down they'd tinker with it, they'd bend the universe around it, they'd do anything to avoid actually having to rewrite it. (Some of the traditional editors didn't help -- 'vi', I'm looking at you...). These days with the fancy UIs (Eclipse or lookalikes) you still have problems typing in code, the editors seem to be more focused on cut-n-paste, hauling in snippets and throwing 'em into the pot, so once again we may still be sacrificing code design on the altar of poor editing.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
