considered harmful: adj. [very common] Edsger W. Dijkstra's
note in the March 1968 "Communications of the ACM", "Goto Statement
Considered Harmful", fired the first salvo in the structured
programming wars (text at `http://www.acm.org/classics').
Amusingly, the ACM considered the resulting acrimony sufficiently
harmful that it will (by policy) no longer print an article taking
so assertive a position against a coding practice. (Years
afterwards, a contrary view contrary view was uttered in a CACM
letter called, inevitably, "`Goto considered harmful' considered
harmful'"'. In the ensuing decades, a large number of both serious
papers and parodies have borne titles of the form "X considered Y".
The structured-programming wars eventually blew over with the
realization that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles has
remained as a persistent minor in-joke (the `considered silly' found
at various places in this lexicon is related).
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