How you shoot your foot

[albert at ccs.neu.edu (Albert Cahalan)]

                 TASK: To 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 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."

Perl: You have 5 %guns, 6 types of %ammo, and various other %tools
that you like to &use.  You chop off $thousands of %feet at once,
and &shoot %them each several $times with the most convenient $gun.
You &make %them look good, and &show %them to your $boss.

Set-uid Perl: You have 5 %guns, 6 types of %ammo, and various
other %tools that you like to &use.  You chop off everyone
else's %feet and &shoot each $foot several $times with the most
convenient $gun.  You die if $tainted $blood gets on you.

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, y
ou continue anyway because you have no exception handling ability.

Cobol: USE HANDGUN.COLT(45), AIM AT LEG.FOOT, THEN WITH
ARM.HAND.FINGER ON HANDGUN.COLT(TRIGGER) PERFORM.SQUEEZE
RETURN HANDGUN.COLT(45) TO HIP.HOLSTER.

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...

Basic(interpreted): You shoot yourself in the foot with a
water pistol until your foot is waterlogged and rots off.

Basic(compiled): You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB
using a SCUD missle launcher.

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.

Concurrent Euclid: You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.

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

Motif: You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the 
trajectory, the bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles 
of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.

Unix: % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: 
      No such file or directory % ls %

XBase: Shooting yourself is no problem. If you want to shoot yourself 
in the foot, you'll have to use Clipper.

Paradox: Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can, too.

Revelation: You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon 
as you figure out what all these bullets are for.

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.

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.

370 JCL: You send your foot down to MIS and include a 400-page document 
explaining exactly how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your 
foot comes back deep-fried.

Apple: We'll let you shoot yourself, but it'll cost you a bundle.

IBM: You insert a clip into the gun, wait half an hour, and it goes 
off in random directions. If a bullet hits your foot, you're lucky.

Microsoft: Object "Foot" will be included in the next release.
You can upgrade for $495.

Cray: I knew you were going to shoot yourself in the foot.

Hewlett-Packard: You can use this machine-gun to shoot yourself in the 
foot, but the firing pin is broken.

NeXT: We don't sell guns anymore, just ammunition.

Sun: Just as soon as Solaris gets here, you can shoot yourself anywhere 
you want.

Ada: After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load 
the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. 
When you try, however, you discover you can't because your foot is of the
wrong type.

Access: You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in 
all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.

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.

Modula2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in 
this language, you shoot yourself in the head.

csh: After searching the manual until your foot falls asleep, you shoot 
the computer and switch to C.

dBase: You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and 
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. 

PL/1: After consuming all system resources including bullets, the data 
processing department doubles it's size, acquires 2 new mainframes and 
drops the original on your foot.

Smalltalk, Actor, et al: After playing with the graphics for 3 weeks,
the programming mangager shoots you in the head.

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