considered harmful

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/). As it turns out, the title under which
   the letter appeared was actually supplied by CACM's editor, Niklaus
   Wirth. 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 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).
    

considered harmful

   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.  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.  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
   realisation that both sides were wrong, but use of such titles
   has remained as a persistent minor in-joke.

   [{Jargon File}]