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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

Meta, but if you're going to write an article named "X considered harmful", then X really has to be as least as harmful as GOTO's prevalence was in 1968. This article is about a little thing that's current between now and now+3y, and that doesn't really hurt anybody when done wrong. Coding a script tag the wrong way is not going to stop the software engineering industry from making fundamental improvements.

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Agreed. The "X considered harmful" meme has really got to stop. There are a couple of articles/essays in which that expression really makes sense, but they are few and far between. This one is not one of them. The ones I've read that actually resonated with me have all been written by authorities within their field and regarding subjects of importance for software development as a whole, not niche subjects such as "CSS drop shadows considered harmful", etc.

(A well written article none the less!)

Especially since the original "X considered harmful" was not formulated by the author, Edsger Dijkstra. It was an editorial emphasis provided by none other than Nikalaus Wirth, who had the qualification of having written or having helped to write a long list of significant programming languages. Dijkstra's origin title was the much more humble "A Case Against the Goto Statement." Wirth's formulation provided a gravitas and finality that signalled a strong endorsement of the essay. The important takeaway lesson, in my mind, is that NOT EVEN EDSGER DIJKSTRA would have presented a paper with such a pretentious title. It was the judicious endorsement of a journal's CHIEF EDITOR. And it is quite literally, at this point, a pretentious title.

> that doesn't really hurt anybody

Well, it does hurt conversion and retention rates, if it causes the page to be rendered slowly. Given how many sites don't load anything until javascript has executed, this could have a meaningful impact on someone's bottom line. And that does hurt businesses and their employees.

And even with the most passionate possible argument, it isn't even comparable to GOTO in 1968.

Perhaps it's because I wasn't even alive, let alone programming, in 1968, but I'd be very interested to hear how losing millions of dollars is incomparably better than inconveniencing programmers.

[delete] wiki'd my question.

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