Lesson plan
Non-structured programming
Non-structured programming (a.k.a. unstructured programming) is the programming paradigm that describes the state-of-the-art of programming before the structured programming paradigm was envisioned and involves the use of the goto statement for control flow such as selection (i.e. ) and iteration (i.e. and ). In general, the use of goto, particularly for selection and iteration, is criticized for producing unreadable, spaghetti code in the 1968 open letter Go To Statement Considered Harmful by Dutch computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra, who coined the term structured programming. Any programming language that provides goto can be used to write unstructured code. Notable languages that rely primarily if not exclusively on goto for control flow include JOSS, FOCAL, TELCOMP, any assembly language, batch file, and early versions of BASIC, Fortran, COBOL, and MUMPS.
Article summary
Non-structured programming (a.k.a. unstructured programming) is the programming paradigm that describes the state-of-the-art of programming before the structured programming paradigm was envisioned and involves the use of the goto statement for control flow such as selection (i.e. ) and iteration (i.e. and ). In general, the use of goto, particularly for selection and iteration, is criticized for producing unreadable, spaghetti code in the 1968 open letter Go To Statement Considered Harmful by Dutch computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra, who coined the term structured programming. Any programming language that provides goto can be used to write unstructured code. Notable languages that rely primarily if not exclusively on goto for control flow include JOSS, FOCAL, TELCOMP, any assembly language, batch file, and early versions of BASIC, Fortran, COBOL, and MUMPS.
Key claims
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.