As a C novice, this makes me wonder - wouldn't templates/macros be able to serve a similar purpose to goto statements if the goal is to avoid nested calls but still share code?
EDIT: Or, for that matter, trusting the compiler to inline small-enough function calls?
A gcc extension that gets around macros is nested functions.
> trusting the compiler
99.99% of the time you should just trust the compiler to do the right thing. That 0.01% of the time use a well tested and maintained library.
Hating on goto in c is just cargo cult programming. goto in BASIC and FORTRAN are evil. Though back in the 1960's 1970's programmers often had no choice. Programmers used evil assembly goto hacks in order to get their programs to fit in memory/disk.
Problem with Dijkstra was he was a academic mathematician who despised practical programming where the program needed to run on the hardware available. Hint back in the 1970's professors like Dijkstra had unlimited accounts on the schools mainframe where everyone else had extremely limited accounts.
EDIT: Or, for that matter, trusting the compiler to inline small-enough function calls?