Re: Computer Languages

["Steve Richter" <srichter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

rpg : you shoot yourself in the foot and your system is replaced by NT.


-----Original Message-----
From: Pat Barber <mboceanside@worldnet.att.net>
To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Date: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 11:09 AM
Subject: Computer 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.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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. However when you try, 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...
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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 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.
>>
>> Unix:
>> % ls
>> foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
>> % rm * .o
>> rm:.o no such file or directory
>> % ls
>> %
>>
>> sh, csh, Perl, 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.
>>
>> Concurrent Euclid: You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.
>>
>> 370 JCL: You send your foot down to MIS in a box 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.
>> Then 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 hops
>> around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight.
>>
>> Modula2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything
>> in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> PL/I: You consume all available system resources, including all the
>> offline bullets.  The DataProcessing&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).
>>
>> Java: You import the entire gun encyclopedia class, the entire
>  mankind class and the definition of all bullets ever made.
>  When you finally figure out which combination you want to use,
>  the bullet moves so slow that your foot rots and falls off by itself.
>>
>> Javascript:  You define the gun, the bullet and the foot in three
>> lines.  Then everytime you run it in a different browser, you shoot
>> everything but the foot.
>>
>>
>> English: You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off.
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