The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to have stolen countless features from one another) sometimes makes it difficult to remember what language you’re currently using. This handy reference is offered as a public service to help programmers who find themselves in such a dilemma.

TASK: 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 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 out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue with the attempts to shoot yourself anyways because you have no exception-handling capability.

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

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.

COBOL: Using a COLT 45 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 re-tied.

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…

FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.

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.

BASIC: Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On large systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

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.

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

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

APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.

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

Unix:

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

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

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.

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

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

Revelation: You’re sure you’re going to be able to shoot yourself in the foot, just as soon as you figure out what all these nifty little bullet-thingies are for.

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.

Warning Signs that you Might Need a Different Lawyer

1. Your lawyer tells you that his last good case was of Budweiser.
2. When the prosecutors see your lawyer, they high-five each other.
3. Your lawyer picks the jury by playing “duck-duck-goose.”
4. Your lawyer tells you that he has never told a lie.
5. A prison guard is shaving your head.

I knocked several times, but you weren’t in. – Opportunity

I once worked as a salesman and was very independent; I took orders from no one.

I think we should really add to the confusion… Let’s call in (Insert Your Favorite Group – Engineering/Financial…)

I think…therefore I am confused.

I will get it done when I get it done!

I would give $1000 to be a millionaire.

I’ve got to stop getting fired like this. People will start to think I’m a drifter. – Lee Iacocca

If a listener nods his head when you’re explaining your program, wake him up.

If a man advances confidently in the direction of his dreams to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau

If a program is useful it will be changed, if it is useless, it will be documented.

You step out of your room and realize that your parents have moved and you don’t have a clue as to when it happened.

Your bookmark list takes 15 minutes to go from top to bottom.

Your nightmares are in HTML and GIFS.

You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.

You start introducing yourself as “Jim at net dot com”

Your heart races faster and beats irregularly each time you see a new WWW site address on TV.

You turn on your intercom when leaving the room so you can hear if new e-mail arrives.

Your wife drapes a blond wig over your monitor to remind you of what she looks like.

All of your friends have an @ in their names.

When looking at a web page full of someone else’s links, you notice all of them are already highlighted in purple.

Your dog has its own home page.

You can’t call your mother… She doesn’t have a modem.

You check your mail. It says “no new messages.” So you check it again.

Your phone bill is a heavy as a brick.

You write your homework in HTML and give your instructor the URL.

You don’t know the sex of three of your closest friends, because they have neutral nicknames and you never bothered to ask.

Your husband tells you that he has had the beard for 2 months

You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop and check your e-mail on the way back to bed.

You tell the kids they can’t use the computer because “Daddy’s got work to do” — even though you don’t have a job.

You buy a Captain Kirk chair with a built-in keyboard and mouse.

Your wife makes a new rule: “The computer cannot come to bed.”

You get a tattoo that says “This body best viewed with Netscape 3.0 or higher.”

You never have to deal with busy signals when calling your ISP… because you never log off.

The last girl you picked up was only a GIF.

You ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of your computer with a toilet.

Your wife says communication is important in a marriage… so you buy another computer and install a second phone line so the two of you can chat.

As your car crashes through the guardrail on a mountain road, your first instinct is to search for the “back” button.

The cowboy lay sprawled across three entire seats in the posh Amarillo theatre. When the usher came by and noticed this he whispered to the cowboy, “Sorry, sir, but you’re only allowed one seat.” The cowboy groaned but didn’t budge. The usher became more impatient. “Sir, if you don’t get up from there, I’m going to have to call the manager. The cowboy just groaned.

The usher marched briskly back up the aisle. In a moment he returned with the manager. Together the two of them tried repeatedly to move the cowboy, but with no success. Finally, they summoned the police. The cop surveyed the situation briefly then asked, “All right buddy, what’s you’re name?”

“Sam,” the cowboy moaned.

“Where ya from, Sam?”

With pain in his voice Sam replied…. “The balcony.”