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It's an interesting comment, and I just read that chapter. But I find it amusing that he's calling Ada (correct spelling, BTW, not ADA) non-humane in comparison to Fortran. Unless it's numerical code, Fortran is pretty non-humane. Computed goto anyone?

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Well, being a mathematician, and having written important texts on numerical analysis, numerical programming was probably foremost in Hamming's mind. Interestingly, he doesn't accuse C of the same issues. I don't really have an opinion one way or the other. I just remembered the quote, and thought I'd share it. Hamming was a pretty awesome dude, so I reference him from time to time.

Fortran (name since 1990) has SELECT CASE to make Computed GO TO obsolete. Maybe you are thinking of FORTRAN?

Sure, FORTRAN then. The language that Hamming was referencing.

Sadly, though, obsolete doesn't mean absent. I saw plenty of ostensibly professional code in the early 2010s that was developed using computed go to. It was "delightful" and totally humane code.

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