
                       What Language is Right for You?
                                     or
      How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot in a Dozen Different Languages
 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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.

