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 accidently 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. 
