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From: Richard J. Gaylord <gaylord@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Subject: amusing article
Date: Wed, 26 May 1993 15:58:17 GMT
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i just read this in the journal "Algorithm" and thought it might amuse
some of you.

================

Shooting  Yourself  in  the  Foot


	The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to
have stolen countless features from each other) sometimes makes it
difficult to remember what language you're currently using.  This guide
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 the 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 COLT45
HANDGUN, AIM gun at
LEG.FOOT, THEN place
ARM.HAND.FINGER on
HAND.GUN.TRIGGER and
SQUEEZE.  THEN return
HANDGUN to HOLSTER.  CHECK
whether shoelace needs to be retied.

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 . . .

BASIC:  Shoot yourself in the foot with a 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 trying to figure
out how to do it in fewer characters.

Pascal:  The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.

Unix:  % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o %rm *.o rm: .o:  No such
file or directory % is %

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.



									Anonymous Reader

richard j. gaylord, university of illinois, gaylord@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu

"if you're not programming functionally, then you must be programming
dysfunctionally"
