OpenEuphoria

GOTO - A fresh perspective?

• Posted by doc at edgetap.net Feb 10, 2002
• 560 views

Hi all,

I will try and keep this short although I feel like writing volumes! 
First a short history: early last year I came across Euphoria and was 
(almost) gobsmacked at the flexibilty it seemed to offer. So I 
downloaded and set to work writing an test program for doing OpenGL 
graphics. Within days I had networking and had two machines with 
synchronised displays. The exercise showed me that Euphoria was very 
capable but, given the effort needed to "hook-in" dll's and to work 
around somethings I had come to take for granted in most languages, I 
decided to shelf Euphoria for the time being. I have kept up with the 
news in the interim though and last week thought it was nearly time to 
revisit Euphoria with the 2.3 release.

Back to the present and to get reacquainted I subscibed to Topica only 
to get bombarded with emails arguing for/against "Goto". First, I would 
like to say that my general impression of everyone using this forum is 
that you are all pretty intelligent, thoughtful and considerate, if not 
agreeable, in your replies. However, this makes it all the more 
difficult for me to figure why you seem to be adopting language-centric 
arguments in your debate rather than accepting that if a feature helps 
someone do something easier then it is intrinsically "good" for them, if 
not for you personally. From this it is obvious that I consider a 
programming language as nothing more than a tool and that the programmer 
is THE most important factor in the overall equation. I am well aware of 
the main argument against the use of Goto regarding bad design but I 
would say that if a program is going to be badly designed then GoTo will 
make little if any difference. On the plus side if it allows the 
programmer to get where they are going quicker and be in the position to 
sit back, appreciate their results, THEN to ponder and reassess their 
code design, then that programmer will become a better programmer more 
quickly than the one still struggling to overcome the (possibly 
misconceived) limitations of the language. FYI I totally agree the 
liberal use of GoTo is indicative of lazy design... and I use it 
liberally while testing my *well-designed* code then remove them all 
when finalising the design. Bluntly, it is the programmer who is 
important not the language, and it is the programmer who should be given 
the choice and the decision should not be made for him/her by other 
people who have no use for a feature.

And my final point (phew!): With the 2.3 release I was on the verge of 
buying Euphoria but, and please correct me if I am wrong, did someone 
from RapidEuphoria say "not for a million bucks!"? This does not suggest 
a very customer oriented approach and smacks of an almost elitist 
"ownership" type mentality. This may explain why in the year since I 
first looked at Euphoria much of it's potential is still untapped and 
apparently ignored by the programming community as a whole. I may still 
buy it but my decision will definately be influenced by replies to this 
post. RapidEuphoria giving Kat, at least, the choice to use GoTo without 
going through hoops will of course make the decision a no-brainer 

PS: Where have all the developers with big plans, eg, X/OpenGL-wrappers, 
gone? Seriously, no one planning DirectX 7/8 wrappers?