Programming languages
How 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."
Objective C
You write a protocol for shooting yourself in the foot so that all people
can get shot in their feet.
Algol (60 or 68)
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.
Algol 60
You spend hours trying to figure out how to fire the gun since it has no
provision for input or output.
APL
You hear a gunshot, and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember
enough linear algebra to understand what happened.
Assembly Language
You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent
the gun, the bullet, and your foot.
BASIC
Shoot self in foot with water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire
lower body is waterlogged.
Visual Basic
You'll shoot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it
that you won't care.
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.
DBase
You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time
your foot feels the pain you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway.
Dbase IV version 1.0
You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly-designed
grenade and the whole building blows up.
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.
Java
You shoot yourself in the foot. Everyone else who accesses your websit
leaves hobbling and cursing.
Lisp
You try to shoot yourself in the foot, but the gun jams on a stray parenthesis.
Pascal
The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.
Modula-2
After realising that you can't actually accomplish anything in the language,
you shoot yourself in the head.
PL/1
Since the bullet is a different type from your foot, the bullet automatically
gets converted to another foot on arrival. It's still difficult to walk
afterwards.
Prolog
You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find
its mark, backtracks to the gun which then explodes in your face.
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.
SQL
You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns,
it has a hole in it, but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of
your leg.