#: 17301 S1/General Interest
    29-Dec-92  12:30:54
Sb: #Languages
Fm: Lee Veal 74726,1752
To: All

   Topic:  How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot
  Author:   harles Forsythe
    Date:  04:09 Today

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 our 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 facility.

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 LEFT.FOOT, THEN place
ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.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 appendaga which holds...

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 figuring out how to do
it in fewer characters.

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

SNOBOL: If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot
yourself in the right foot.

HyperTalk: Put the first bullet of the gun into the foot left of leg of you.
Answer the result.

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.


From the December 1991 issue of Developer's Insight and later from The Well.

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