Which language is right for you?

Which language is right for you?

The folloowing is originaly from "The Real Times", a newsletter of the Greater Boston Chapter of ACM. "Which language is right for you?" by Simon Walmsley and Steve Suttles.

In order to help you make a competent, uncomplicated choice concerning thecompetition between complex, incompatible computer compilers, we havecomposed this complete, compact, composite compendium comprising comparisonsto compensate for the complaints and complements of their compromises. We hope you will find it comprehensible rather than compost.

6502

You shoot yourself in the foot.

68000

You can't decide which gun and which bullet to use, so you hang yourself.

8080

You foot yourself in the shoot.

Z80

...

Ada

The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette.

Assembler

LDA BULLET

STA FOOT

APL

GN (* Upside down triangle *) FT ^ BLT

APL

You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out.

BASIC (interpreted)

You shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol until your leg is waterlogged and falls off.

BASIC (compiled)

You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a Scud missle launcher.

C

You shoot yourself in the foot and then no one else can figure out what you did.

C

*foot = bullet

C++

You create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Not knowing which feet are virtual, medical care is impossible.

COBOL

USE HANDGUN.COLT(45), AIM AT LEG.FOOT, THEN WITH ARM.HAND.FINGER ON HANDGUN.-COLT(TRIGGER) PERFORM SQUEEZE, RETURN HANDGUN.COLT TO HIP.HOLSTER

csh

After searching the manual until your foot falls asleep, you shoot the computer and switch to C.

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.

FORTH

Foot Bullet shootInto.

FORTRAN

EQUIVALENCE (BULLET, FOOT)

FORTRAN

You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes. Then you read in the next foot and repeat. You shoot the eleventh bullet anyway, since no exception processing was anticipated.

Modula-2

You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.

Modula-2

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

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...

occam

You shoot both your feet with several guns a once.

ORCA/C

Byteworks keeps promising to supply good ammunition RSN!

Pascal

Same as Modula-2, except the bullet is not of the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.

Pascal

You try to shoot yourself in the foot, but it tells you that your foot is the wrong type and out of range to boot!

PL/1

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

Prolog (interpreted)

Your program tries to shoot you in the foot, but you die of old age before the bullet leaves the gun.

Prolog (compiled)

The facts are against you. You try to stop the gun from shooting you in the foot, but it replies "No."

Prolog

You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.

370 JCL

You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.

Smalltalk, Actor

After playing with the graphics for three weeks the programming manager shoots you in the head.

Snobol

Grab your foot with your hand and rewrite your hand to be a bullet.

SNOBOL

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

TECO

@fs/bullet/foot/

Windows

You click on Bullet, and the mouse knocks the manual off the desktop. The manual lands corner-first on your foot.

Concurrent Euclid

You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.

HyperTalk

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

Motif

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

Unix

% ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o

% rm *.o rm: .o: No such file or directory

% ls

%

XBase

Shooting yourself is no problem. If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, you'll have to use Clipper.

Paradox

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

Revelation

You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all of these bullets are for.

Visual Basic

You'll shoot yourself in the foot, but you'll you have so much fun doing it that you won't care.

SQL

insert into body (foot) values ('bullet')

| Kevin Yetman     Merrimack College '92     yetmank(at)merrimack.edu      |

| Dedication to all girls that won't give me the time of day:         |

| "If you walk away from love, you're headed down a long dark road.     |

|  If you're gonna leave me now, there's something you should know.     |

|  It's gonna take a long, long, time, It's something you might         |

|  never find, cause if you walk away from me, you walk away from love" |

| -Jim Jamison  1991 |

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