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[Demophobe]

This is the place to post it. I'll start.

How various programmers shoot themselves 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.

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.

VMS:

$ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET
$ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU
$ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT
%DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN-CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1-IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image

oh well, almost..

FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot. self dup >foot shoot

[Demophobe]

If they made toasters ....

If IBM made toasters ...

They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market for five, maybe six toasters.

If Microsoft made toasters ...

Everytime you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd have to pay for it anyway. Toaster'95 would weigh 15,000 pounds (hence requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark you wanted your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other appliances to find out who made them. Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If The Rand Corporation made toasters ...

It would be a large, perfectly smooth and seamless black cube. Every morning there would be a piece of toast on top of it. Their service department would have an unlisted phone number, and the blueprints for the box would be highly classified government documents. The X-Files would have an episode about it.

If the NSA made toasters ...

Your toaster would have a secret trapdoor that only the NSA could access in case they needed to get at your toast for reasons of national security.

If Hewlett-Packard made toasters ...

They would market the Reverse Polish Toaster, which takes in toast and gives you regular bread.

If Sony made toasters ...

Their "Personal Toasting Device", which would be barely larger than the single piece of bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your belt.

If Cray made toasters ...

They would cost $16 million but would be faster than any other single-slice toaster in the world.

If Radio Shack made toasters ...

The staff would sell you a toaster, but not know anything about it. Or you could by all the parts to build your own toaster.

If K-Tel sold toasters ...

They would not be available in stores, and you would get a free set of Ginsu knives with each one.

[Demophobe]

Obscure Computer Languages

SLOBOL

SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to take a trip to Bolivia to pick up the coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.

VALGOL

(With special thanks to Dan and Betsy "Moon Unit" Pfau) From its modest beginnings in southern California's San Fernando Valley, VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry. VALGOL commands include REALLY, LIKE, WELL, and Y$KNOW. Variables are assigned with the =LIKE and =TOTALLY operators. Other operators include the "CALIFORNIA BOOLEANS", FERSURE, and NOWAY. Repetions of code are handle in FOR-SURE loops. Here is a sample VALGOL program:

14 LIKE, Y$KNOW (I MEAN) START
%% IF
PI A =LIKE BITCHEN AND
01 B =LIKE TUBULAR AND
9C =LIKE GRODY^MAX
4K (FERSURE)^2
18 THEN
4I FOR I= LIKE 1 TO OH MAYBE 100
86 DO WAH + (DITTY^2)
9 BARF(I) =TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
-17 SURE
1F LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
? REALLY
$$ LIKE TOTALLY (Y$KNOW)

VALGOL is characterized by its unfriendly error messages. For example, when the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message GAG ME WITH A SPOON.

LAIDBACK

Historically, VALGOL is a derivative of LAIDBACK, which was developed at the (now defunct) Marin County Center for T'ai Chi, Mellowness and Computer Programming, as an alternative to the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley. The center was ideal for programmmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while they worked. Unfortunately, few programmers could survive there for long, since the center outlawed pizza and RC Cola in favor of bean curd and Perrier. Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle and nonthreatening language. For Example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the message, SORRY MAN, I CAN'T DEAL WITH THAT.

SARTRE

Named after the late existenitial philosopher. SARTRE is an extremely unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just are there. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions. SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed and are no fun at parties.

FIFTH

FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM, and BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY, CABERBET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH and WHATEVERSAROUND. The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include VSOP and LAFITTE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers who end up using the language.


C+-: (pronounced "C more or less")

Unlike C++, C+- is a subject oriented language. Each C+- class instance known as a subject, holds hidden members, known as prejudices or undeclared preferences, which are impervious preferences, which are impervious to outside messages, as well as public members known as boasts or claims. The following C operators are overridden as shown:

>
better than
<
worse than
>>
much better than
<<
forget it
!
not on your life
==
comparable, other things being equal.

C+- is a strongly typed language based on stereotyping and self-righteous logic. The Boolean variables TRUE and FALSE (known as constants in less realistic languages) are supplemented with CREDIBLE and DUBIOUS, which are fuzzier than Zadeh's traditional fuzzy categories. All Booleans can be declared with the modifiers strong and weak. Weak implication is said to "preserve deniability" and was added at the request of the D.O.D. to ensure compatability with future versions of Ada. Well-formed falsehoods (WFFs) are assignment-compatible with all Booleans. What-if and why-not interactions are aided by the special conditional evenifnot X then Y.

C+- supports information hiding and, among friend classes only, rumor sharing. Borrowing from the Eiffel lexicon, non-friend classes can be killed by arranging contracts. Note that friendships are intransitive, volatile, and non-Abelian.

Single and multiple inheritance mechanisms are implemented with random mutations. Disinheritance rules are c overed by a complex probate protocol. In addition to base, derrived, virtual, and abstract classes, C+- supports gut classes. In certian locales, polygamous derivations and bastard classes are permitted. Elsewhere, loose coupling between classes is illegal, so the marriage and divorce operators may be needed:

marriage (MParent1, FParent1);
// child classes can now be derrived
sclass MySclass: public MParent1, FParent1
{ // define MySclass
}

sclass YourSclass: public MParent1, FParent2
// illegitimate

divorce (MParent1, FParent1);

marriage (MParent1, FParent2);
sclass YourSclass: public MParent1, FParent2
{ // OK now
}

Operator precedence rules can be suspended with the directive #pragma dwim, known as the "Do what I mean" pragma. ANSIfication will be firmly resisted. C+-'s slogan is "Be Your Own Standard."