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Language Comparison! (Ted Dennison)

I run across these lists everywhere. Unfortunately, they all seem to have been done by some brain-damaged soul who thinks C is a "normal" language. So I have made an attempt to come up with a new list that is a little more accurate, at least where I sit.

Ada :
You aim at your foot and pull the trigger, but the safety stops the gun from firing. The safety won't budge until you tag your foot with a sign reading "Bullet Hole in this foot", and call the paramedics. You do so, then shoot yourself in the foot.

C :
The gun comes in 38 pieces, with a set of assembly instructions. After painstakingly assembling the pieces, you pull the trigger and the gun promptly backfires and blows your head off.

Assembly :
The same as C, except you have to hand-machine all the pieces as well. When you pull the trigger, your whole house explodes.

Java:
You break into someone else's home and steal their water pistol. You then make a child gun that uses .38 rounds instead of water. When you pull the trigger on the child gun, nothing happens to you, but everyone who visits your house gets shot in the foot.

Basic :
You aim the gun at a straight horizontal and pull the trigger, which causes a stream of water to be squirted straight down onto your foot.

Pearl :
You aim the gun at your foot and pull the trigger. There is no explosion, but gravity causes the bullet to slide out of the barrel and bounce off your foot.

Lisp :
You do a small part of the remaining work involved in shooting yourself in the foot. You then call yourself, and tell yourself to shoot yourself in the foot.

Pascal :
The same as Ada, except when you pull the trigger a little sign pops out reading "BANG!".

C++ :
The same as Java, except you try to build the parent water pistol using the gun tools from the C gun. When you pull the trigger on the child gun, the parent C gun explodes, spraying water everywhere, including the chamber of the child gun. This causes the child gun to backfire, blowing your head off.

Visual C++ :
The same as C++, except that the bullets, the gun parts, the tools you use to put it together, the hospital you get taken to afterwards, and the ambulance that takes you there are all owned by the same company.

APL :
Whenever you pull the trigger, no matter where you aim the gun, the bullet ricochets off of 13 objects and lodges in your foot. The gun has been examined by ballistics experts, mechanical engineers, and even the person who made it, and none of them can figure out how it works.

FORTRAN :
When you aim the gun at your foot and pull the trigger, a table indexing error causes the gun to shoot its firing pin into your foot instead of the bullet.


(c) 1998-2004 All Rights Reserved David Botton