Structured Programming with go to Statements
Structured Programming with go to Statements by Donald Knuthby Donald Knuth
Ranked 3 of 7 research papers by recommenders
People recommend reading the full paper, the source of a widely quoted sentiment, and call it a lovely read. One critic finds it hard to read.
People recommend reading the full paper, the source of a widely quoted sentiment, and call it a lovely read. One critic finds it hard to read.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Source of a widely quoted sentiment
“Pro tip: You can skip to the very end of the article to get to this sentiment without losing context.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Laws of Software Engineering” “You can skip to the very end of the article to get to this sentiment without losing context.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Laws of Software Engineering” “I really encourage people to read the Donald Knuth essay that features this sentiment.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Laws of Software Engineering” - Comment from 30 Aug 2026 in “Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]”
Worth reading in full
“I really encourage people to read the Donald Knuth essay that features this sentiment.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Laws of Software Engineering” “just reading the Knuth article the quote is from might bring similar insights”
Comment from 30 Aug 2026 in “Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]” “I'd recommend everyone who uses the phrase reads the rest of the paper”
Comment from 18 Mar 2026 in “Rob Pike's 5 Rules of Programming” - Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Some software bloat is OK”
Other research papers people recommend
The four most recommended other research papers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Ironies of Automation by Lisanne Bainbridge | 14 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Attention Is All You Need by Vaswani et al. | 14 | 2 | 88% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Structured Programming with go to Statementsby Donald KnuthThis page | 7 | 1 | 88% | 4 | — | — |
| MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters by Dean and Ghemawat | 6 | 1 | 86% | 5 | — | — |
| The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering by Microsoft | 6 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
7 of the 8 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“just reading the Knuth article the quote is from might bring similar insights”
“Pro tip: You can skip to the very end of the article to get to this sentiment without losing context.”
“You can skip to the very end of the article to get to this sentiment without losing context.”
“I really encourage people to read the Donald Knuth essay that features this sentiment.”
“I'd recommend everyone who uses the phrase reads the rest of the paper”
“I actually think it's a lovely paper”
“this particular paper [1] is… hard to read.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.