If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes accepted as truth
This quote has been incorrectly attributed to Joseph Goebbels, minister of Propaganda in in the Nazi Germany. If is a false quotation, but the concept is known to anybody interested in social influence.
Taking the concept to the Computer Science realm: there are ideas that are considered and applied without much thinking.
A curious sample is the GOTO statement. This instruction has been despised, since it is a key cause of bad code. An uncoditional jump to an arbitrary location in the code definitely is a dangerous tool, since flow control will be difficult to track (and probably such use would be unnecessary too).
Note that some high level programming langugaes include goto, as
C++
or
C#.
Java decided to forget about the problem and reverted to labeled
statements
without the goto keyword.
But still it will be popular culture the fact the goto is bad, something
to avoid; even though it may be an useful tool.
With so many people repeating goto is bad, audience receiving this
message without the proper learing will end up believing it; not taking the
time to investigate or evaluate its utility. It then becomes a belief, a
religion; and that would hinder the capacity to take decisions.