What Language is Right for You?
or
How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot in a Dozen Different Languages
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Assembler:
The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to
aim the gun.
APL:
GN@FT^BLT
Basic (Interpreted):
You shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol until your leg rots and
falls off.
Basic (Compiled):
You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB pellet fired from a Patriot
missile launcher.
C++:
You create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot;
however, not knowing which ones are real and which are virtual, medical
care is impossible.
COBOL:
USE HANDGUN.COLT(45). AIM AT LEG.FOOT. THEN WITH ARM.HAND.FINGER(INDEX)
ON HANDGUN.COLT(TRIGGER) PERFORM SQUEEZE-TRIGGER UNTIL HAMMER-FALLS.
RETURN HANDGUN.COLT(45) TO HIP.HOLSTER.
Dbase:
You buy a gun. Then you find out that bullets are only available from
other vendors. However, they 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.
Fortran:
You shoot yourself in each toe iteratively, until you run out of toes, at
which time the sixth bullet augers into your parquet floor since no
exception processing exists.
Mumps:
You shoot 583,149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armor-piercing
bullets into even numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the
building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself
in the head rather than trying to modify that line.
Object-Oriented Pascal:
You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might
currently be a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.
PL/1:
After consuming all available resources, including bullets, the
foot-shooting department doubles its size, acquires two mainframes, and
drops the original gun on your foot.
Smalltalk:
After playing around with various graphic renditions of feet being shot,
the programming manager shoots you in the head.
