> Having a discussion with someone who quotes Dijkstra can be frustrating.
Agreed. Most of the time, it seems the pithy quotes are the only thing that the quoter knows about Dijkstra.
> You end up having to explain why blanket bans on goto don't make sense
For Dijkstra's GOTO quote specifically, there's a wonderful document by David Tribble named "Go To Statement Considered Harmful: A Retrospective" that does a line-by-line analysis of Dijkstra's paper and explains what Dijkstra's meant in the context of his time and examines where usage of GOTO still makes sense today.
Agreed. Most of the time, it seems the pithy quotes are the only thing that the quoter knows about Dijkstra.
> You end up having to explain why blanket bans on goto don't make sense
For Dijkstra's GOTO quote specifically, there's a wonderful document by David Tribble named "Go To Statement Considered Harmful: A Retrospective" that does a line-by-line analysis of Dijkstra's paper and explains what Dijkstra's meant in the context of his time and examines where usage of GOTO still makes sense today.
http://david.tribble.com/text/goto.html