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 undestand what the heck happened.

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."

Ada
     If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United
     States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up on front of
     a firing squad, and thell 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.

MICROSOFT C++ w/ WINDOWS SDK
     You write about 100 lines of code to print "Hello, world!" in a
     dialogue box, only to have a UAE pop up when you click on OK. This
     shuts down the program manager, leaving you nothing but a screensaver.
     You then fly to Washington and shoot Bill Gates in the foot.

LOGO
     You tell a turtle to draw a picture of a foot and a gun, then shoot
     the turtle.