To be fair, Dijkstra said "harmful", not "forbidden". He was also talking about encouraging structured procedural programming rather than a game of Who's Clever Enough to Follow the Spaghetti.
We do things that are harmful all the time, in limited appropriate situations. Cutting into your abdomen is harmful, but a skillfully used surgeon's scalpel can fix a bigger problem. That's not license to go roll around on a pile of jagged, rusty steel scrap. Missing sleep is harmful, but if you do it once in a while to keep your job or to escape a nighttime flash flood then it's helpful.
Dijkstra was intending to set the norm from which people should mindfully and occasionally deviate. The point wasn't to ban the use of labelled jumps entirely.
We do things that are harmful all the time, in limited appropriate situations. Cutting into your abdomen is harmful, but a skillfully used surgeon's scalpel can fix a bigger problem. That's not license to go roll around on a pile of jagged, rusty steel scrap. Missing sleep is harmful, but if you do it once in a while to keep your job or to escape a nighttime flash flood then it's helpful.
Dijkstra was intending to set the norm from which people should mindfully and occasionally deviate. The point wasn't to ban the use of labelled jumps entirely.