"Considered Harmful" Essays Considered Harmful

There was nothing offensive or harmful in Dijkstra's original article about the go-to statement; on the contrary, it was brilliant and for many people (including me) communicated a deep and lasting insight in a flash.

"There are those cases where such essays are written because the author enjoys grandstanding, and knows that use of the "considered harmful" format will get them noticed. A piece of this type is usually so over the top that it is easy to spot. For example, a piece titled "'Considered Harmful' Essays Considered Harmful" would very likely be a case of using the "considered harmful" format to draw attention for its own sake. We will ignore such essays in this commentary."

The essay will ignore itself?

Yeah we talked about this recently, it's Godel's theory of incompleteness or something :-)

"There are those cases where such essays are written because the author enjoys grandstanding, and knows that use of the "considered harmful" format will get them noticed. A piece of this type is usually so over the top that it is easy to spot."

I remember you tipped your hat to Jonathan Swift and used "a modest proposal" in the title when you wanted to get noticed and be over the top in your writing.