Net.Humor Archive - Programmer's Guide to the Languages


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.

TASK: Shoot yourself in the foot.

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 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:
% ls
foot.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.

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.

Modula2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in 
this language, you shoot yourself in the head.


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