Fuck my life! For my studies at University it is required that I learn how to code... Over the past month I've been learning java, and yesterday a friend of mine has introduced me to Go. Now all I want to do is learn Go, meanwhile our Prof pushes us to learn switch-case and goto...

yeahhh expect everything you learn at university to be 10 years outdated at least. it's (arguably) the best environment to learn, but you don't necessarily learn the best things there.

@balte Sadly yes, but thats why I try to stay open minded and get some more recent information from my friend/s

that is a good sign to get into programming. personally, the point of going into university is developing the urge to learn. programming world is always developing, changing here and there. and you need to be ready to learn or re-learn a new thing.

First learn the basics of programming and the core idioms and semantics. _Then_ you can start piling turtles on turtles.

If you get a tazzer it does not mean you're safe in the streets.
If you learn syntax of 5 languages it doesn't mean you know how to write an app.

Learn all you can in the uni. Basic principles remain the same no matter what lang you're using.

For instance.. Why is switch-case better than if-else tree?

@netikras *coughcoughHaskell* 8^D

However, learning other languages *after* you got comfortable in your field, can help to improve your perspective alot. ;-)

First - what's wrong with goto? Second what is there to learn about goto that takes time?

Don't fall into the tutorial hell where you feel like you're learning new things everyday but you're not implementing at all! Learning the core concepts of a language can take anywhere from months to years. I'd suggest not to switch languages in the initial stages of your learning.

Learn from both

@RiPtide uh what's wrong with switch cases?

I understand you want to learn a new language but you have to learn to prioritise what is important, not saying learning a new language is fun and all but you went to university to get a degree, gotta stick to that as your main priority. Once your assignments are done take the time to learn new language, design principles and such.

Anyway that's my opinion, take it as how you see it.

Maybe ask for placement test and see if u can skip some class.

@f03n1x Nothing in particular, I just think they are very slow to type and there is almost always a better solution on how to do it :/

@SgnfcntOverflow It is one hell of a trap, because you can mess up your code really bad! Also in my opinion, if you get to the point where you think goto would be useful, then something is probably wrong with your whole architecture. And it's bad style, since it reduces readibility.
But I guess it's easy enough to learn?

@RiPtide goto is one step closer to random-access machine. Maybe you won't want to use low-level stuff in the future but I believe that understanding it helps grasp how your programs really work and optimize them better. In the end all your programs are a bunch of memory manipulation, comparison-to-zero and jump (goto) instructions.

Sure, your course/professor may be bad, but goto is not inherently bad, what I probably failed to express in my first comment. About usefulness - one of the projects often relying on the use of goto is the Linux kernel, which even if you don't like linux you must agree is an important project as it runs most of the servers on the Internet.

Whatever you decide to learn, I hope it works out well for you, but please don't discard goto just because people say it's "outdated".

@SgnfcntOverflow Yeah alright, I didn't know linux was relying so much on goto. I just heard a lot of bad stuff about it, and wanted to try and avoid it as much as possible. But thanks for the clarification!

@RiPtide switch cases are a great wait to filter through enums, and most IDEs i've dealt with auto fill all enum types for what ever you put inside switch (enum)

I havent found a way to simplify filtering through enums faster than switch cases, it is certainly cleaner and more readable than say use else-if statements

I use it quite a lot for enums in game development, it was for particular circumstances as all tools in the programming are used in their specific cases, sure there maybe a chance you wont ever use it but if you ever need to do something specific with enums well then thats when it will be useful

@RiPtide @f03n1x switch-case is out of the question. It is a part of the very core.

About the "goto-is-bad"-mantra, I can only say this:
Generally it is a bad way to do flow control in lengthy code, because it obfuscates what happens. Especially when there are multiple labels and jumping "back and forth" blocks.

*But*: in C it is the most clean, elegant and readable way to clean up before early returns. If several actions can return an error.