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- 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 quide is offered as a
- service to help programmers who find themselves in such dilemmas.
-
-
- C: You shoot yourself in the foot.
-
-
- C++: You accidently 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 anyway because you have no exception-handling ability.
-
-
- Modula-2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this
- language, you shoot yourself in the head.
-
-
- COBOL: USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place
- ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANGUN to
- HOLSTER.
- CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.
-
-
- BASIC: Shoot yourself in foot with water pistol. On big systems, continue
- until entire lower body is waterlogged.
-
-
- FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.
-
-
- APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do
- it fewer characters.
-
-
- Pascal: The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.
-
-
- Concurrent Euclid: You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.
-
-
- Motif: You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory,
- the bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handle of the gun. When
- you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.
-
-
- Unix: % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm *.o rm: .o: No such file or
- directory % ls %
-
-
- XBase: Shooting yourself is no problem. If you want to shoot yourself in the
- foot, you'll have to use Clipper.
-
-
- Paradox: Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.
-
-
- Reveration: You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you
- figure out what all these bullets are for.
-
-
- Visual Basic: You'll shoot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun
- doing it that you won't care.
-
-
- Prolog: You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program
- figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.
-
-
- 370 JCL: You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining
- how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-
- fried.
-