Issue 087: Considered Harmful

December 1st, 2025

Welcome to the 87th issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Considered Harmful. In this edition, we weigh the historical and philosophical implications of the phrase "Considered Harmful"; in our Vidéothèque section, we watch Phil Nash explain which parts of OOP can be considered harmful; and in the Library section, we read a paper by Joanna Rutkowska explaining why the Intel x86 architecture should be considered harmful.

Harmfully Considered

by Adrian Kosmaczewski

We, the authors of the magazine you are reading right now, sometimes joke that the true legacy of these articles would be realized if someone presented a paper titled "De Programmatica Ipsum Considered Harmful". Alas (or not), we do not think this is ever going to happen, although I know that some members of academia follow our ramblings month after month, so who knows; if you ever publish such a contraption, we would love to print and frame a copy for the sake of bragging rights.

Phil Nash

by Adrian Kosmaczewski

A quick search on YouTube with the query "Considered Harmful" is a revealing exercise. The number and variety of articles thereby returned is outstanding and, to a certain extent, hilarious. The day I wrote this article I had the following ones popping up, all of which were literally considered harmful for the purposes of the content: threads, enums, C++ generics, rand(), if, else, the UPDATE SQL statement, global variables, user stories, architecture, YAML (well, this one we can agree upon), IInterface, mocking frameworks, assemblers, abstractions, penetration testing, and yes, even programming itself. Among those search results there was even a talk by Alan Kay himself named "Normal Considered Harmful".

Joanna Rutkowska

by Adrian Kosmaczewski

In a key scene of the 2012 blockbuster James Bond film "Skyfall", MI6 quartermaster Q, played by Ben Whishaw, realizes too late that plugging a cable into the laptop of a notoriously skilled terrorist like Raoul Silva (one of Javier Bardem's most remarkable roles) was a terrible idea. After a few seconds of connection, the laptop infects the systems of MI6, releasing all physical doors and disabling all security guards, prompting Silva to escape and wreak havoc through the London Underground. A message appears on the laptop screen, taunting Q, reading "Not such a clever boy".