THE PROGRAMMER'S QUICK GUIDE TO THE LANGUAGES
The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to have
stolen countless features from one another) sometimes makes it difficult to
remember what language you're currently using. This handy reference is offered
as a public service to help programmers who find themselves in such a
dilemma.
C: You shoot yourself in the foot.
C++: You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot
them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since
you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others
and saying, "That's me, over there."
FORTRAN: You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run
out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of
bullets, you continue with the attempts to shoot yourself anyways because you
have no exception-handling capability.
Pascal: The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.
Ada: After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently
load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. When you
try, however, you discover you can't because your foot is of the wrong type.
COBOL: Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place
ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER.
CHECK whether shoelace needs to be re-tied.
LISP:
You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you
shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot
yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in
the appendage which holds ...
FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.
Prolog: You tell your program that you want to be shot in the foot.
The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't permit it to
explain it to you.
BASIC: Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On large
systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.
Visual Basic: You'll really only _appear_ to have shot yourself in the
foot, but you'll have had so much fun doing it that you won't care.
HyperTalk: Put the first bullet of gun into foot left of leg of you.
Answer the result.
Motif: You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the
bullet, its trajectory, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the
gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.
APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out
how to do it in fewer characters.
SNOBOL: If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail,
shoot yourself in the right foot.
Unix:
% lsfoot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm:.o no such file or directory
% ls
%
Concurrent Euclid: You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.
370 JCL: You send your foot down to MIS and include a 400-page
document explaining exactly how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your
foot comes back deep-fried.
Paradox: Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can,
too.
Access: You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in
all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.
Revelation: You're sure you're going to be able to shoot yourself in
the foot, just as soon as you figure out what all these nifty little
bullet-thingies are for.
dBase: You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company
and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next
version of the gun is the one that is scheduled to actually shoot bullets.
PL/I: After consuming all system resources including bullets, the data
processing department doubles its size, acquires two new mainframes and drops
the original on your foot.
Assembler: You try to shoot yourself in the foot, only to discover you
must first invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.
or:
You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system
administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of
contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around
the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight.
Modula2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything
in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.