[OT] Shooting yourself in the foot

[Sean Kenwrick]

You've probably already seen this lots of times, but in case you
haven't............

HOW TO SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT USING DIFFERENT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES


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 ...

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.

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/I: After consuming all system resources including bullets, the data
processing department doubles its size, acquires two new mainframes and
drops the original on your foot.

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.
or:
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.

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

 

[Christopher Benson-Manica]

HOW TO SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT USING DIFFERENT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

Ugh. Do me a favor and don't post more funny things during the work
day - I think I just got some quizzical looks from coworkers while I
tried (unsuccessfully) not to laugh out loud reading that. The only
real problem with that is that it omitted SmallTalk/Squeak, which I
despise...

 

[Christopher Benson-Manica]

HOW TO SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT USING DIFFERENT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

Oh, some of my own additions:

Squeak: The documentation claims you can shoot yourself in the foot
by sending an appropriate message to an appropriate object. The
documentation doesn't tell you what those objects are. Also, the
documentation is lying. You shoot Mark Guzdial in the foot.

HTML/Javascript: You discover that the <foot> tag is deprecated.
Also, document.foot.shoot isn't supported by Netscape 4. You try to
use layers, but Netscape 4 shoots you in the hand.

 

[Kevin D. Quitt]

PHP: You spend several days inventing the gun, bullets, and your foot.
Before you're ready to try to shoot your foot, you discover there is
already a package available to do it. Unfortunately, it doesn't work,
and your version only works with text-only browsers.

 

[August Derleth]

You've probably already seen this lots of times, but in case you
haven't............

HOW TO SHOOT YOURSELF IN THE FOOT USING DIFFERENT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES


C: You shoot yourself in the foot.

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
char str[BUFSIZ];

gets(str);
/* scanf("%s\n", str); */
printf("%s\n", str);

return 0;
}

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."

C++: You look at the template system and go stark raving loony. You
shoot Stroustroup in the head.

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.

FORTRAN: Your compiler crashes because you didn't indent a line
correctly, and it takes your whole system with it.
or:
DO 10 I = 1.25,12
WRITE (*,*) DO10I
10 CONTINUE
STOP
END

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

Pascal: When you find a compiler that allows you to shoot yourself in
the foot, you can't find enough documentation to actually use it. All of
the example code is a wrapper around assembly anyway, and none of it is
more recent than the CP/M-80. You switch to C.

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.

COBOL: You shoot yourself in the foot easily enough, but when you try to
figure out how many bullets are left in the gun you choke on the syntax.

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 ...

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.

APL: A gun goes off, there's a smell of gunpowder in the air, and your
foot is bleeding, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to figure
out what just happened.

PL/I: After consuming all system resources including bullets, the data
processing department doubles its size, acquires two new mainframes and
drops the original on your foot.

PL/I: You try to shoot yourself in the foot, but when you realize your
documentation and your compiler use two different subsets, you shoot
yourself in the head, 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.
or:
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.

or:
You glance through the Intel developers' documentation, and you realize
it would be easier just to move to Tibet and become a monk.

 

[nrk]

C++: You look at the template system and go stark raving loony. <snip>

I know you intended it to be humorous. But the snipped portion was in
rather poor taste.

-nrk.

<snip>

 

[Mike Wahler]

I know you intended it to be humorous. But the snipped portion was in
rather poor taste.

I suspect that if Bjarne saw it, it did make him laugh (and perhaps duck
)

IMO some folks need to 'loosen up' a bit...

-Mike

 

[August Derleth]

August Derleth wrote:



I know you intended it to be humorous. But the snipped portion was in
rather poor taste.

-nrk.

<snip>

So, shooting myself in the head /isn't/ in poor taste but shooting a
language deisgner in the head /is/. Interesting. What does Mary Post say
on the issue? ("Never on the first date. Maybe if she's already kissed
you. ... ")

I think Mike Wahler is correct: Some people (well, /you/) need to
lighten up a bit.

 

[Morris Dovey]

APL: A gun goes off, there's a smell of gunpowder in the air,
and your foot is bleeding, but you don't remember enough
linear algebra to figure out what just happened.

APL at least allows you to 'reshape' your foot with a single
operator. (-:

 

[nrk]

So, shooting myself in the head /isn't/ in poor taste but shooting a
language deisgner in the head /is/. Interesting. What does Mary Post say
on the issue? ("Never on the first date. Maybe if she's already kissed
you. ... ")

No, I never said shooting self in the head isn't in poor taste. Only that
shooting someone else (it doesn't really matter if they did language design
or laundry for a living) in the head is in rather poor taste (poor enough
that it made me comment). That said, this was a personal opinion that I
shouldn't have aired here. Apologies, and there will be no further
contributions from me on this topic/thread.

I think Mike Wahler is correct: Some people (well, /you/) need to
lighten up a bit.

No, Thank you. I'd like to stick to my guns in this specific instance.
However, I will try not to force my unlightened self as the moral/good
taste police in this newsgroup.

-nrk.

 

[Mike Wahler]

No, I never said shooting self in the head isn't in poor taste. Only that
shooting someone else (it doesn't really matter if they did language design
or laundry for a living) in the head is in rather poor taste (poor enough
that it made me comment). That said, this was a personal opinion that I
shouldn't have aired here. Apologies, and there will be no further
contributions from me on this topic/thread.


No, Thank you. I'd like to stick to my guns in this specific instance.
However, I will try not to force my unlightened self as the moral/good
taste police in this newsgroup.

I thought everyone knew that the ubiquitous phrase "shoot oneself in the
foot" is a *metaphor*. The original thread expanded upon that. August
added his.

Now this 'objection' in your post includes in your last paragraph above
yet *another* similar metaphor ('stick to my guns'). Go look in the
mirror.

-Mike
"Hey, old man, why is your foot always in your mouth?"
"I'm sticking to my gums."

 

[nrk]

I thought everyone knew that the ubiquitous phrase "shoot oneself in the
foot" is a *metaphor*. The original thread expanded upon that. August
added his.

Now this 'objection' in your post includes in your last paragraph above
yet *another* similar metaphor ('stick to my guns'). Go look in the
mirror.

The usage of that metaphor was intentional. It seemed to be bang on target
for the occasion. The irony is killing me. Or is it one of the many
metaphorical bullets?

-nrk.
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in"
-- Michael Corleone