Subject: A Programming Language Guide

Seen on an external network, and repeated here for your reference:

The proliferation of modern programming languages which seem to have
stolen countless features from each other sometimes makes it difficult
to remember which language you're using.  This guide is offered as a
public service to help programmers in such dilemmas.

C:  You shoot yourself in the foot.

Assembly:  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.

APL:  You hear a gunshot, and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't
      remember enough linear algebra to understand what the hell happened.

C++:  You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them
      all in the foot.  Providing emergency medical care 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."

Ada:  If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United
      States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front
      of a firing squad, and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at his feet."

MODULA-2:  After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything
           in the language, you shoot yourself in the head.

Pascal:  Same as Modula-2, except the bullets are the wrong type and
         won't pass through the barrel.  The gun explodes.

sh,csh,etc.:  You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend
              five hours reading man pages before giving up.  You then shoot the
              computer and switch to C.

Smalltalk:  You spend so much time playing with the graphics and
            windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away
            your workstation, and makes you develop in COBOL on a character
            terminal.

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-
          processing ability.

ALGOL:  You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket.  The musket is
        esthetically fascinating, and the wound baffles the adolescent medic
        in the emergency room.

COBOL:  USEing a COLT45 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 retied.

BASIC:  Shoot self in foot with water pistol.  On big systems, continue
        until entire lower body is waterlogged.

PL/I:  You consume all available system resources, including all the
       offline bullets.  The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles
       its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes, and drops
       the original one on your foot.

SNOBOL:  You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be
         a bullet.  The act of shooting the original foot then changes your
         hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).

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...

SCHEME:  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... ...but none
         of the other appendages are aware of this happening.

English:  You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off.

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