bobmon@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (RAMontante) (07/08/90)
The lovely explanation of how to identify a programming language by its effects, missed a few languages. Herewith: 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. Algol: 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. 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. BASIC: Shoot self in foot with water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged. PL/I: You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The DataProcessing&Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes, and drops the original one on your foot. SNOBOL: You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot). 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... scheme: 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... ...but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening. English: You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. -- Edited by Brad Templeton. MAIL your jokes (jokes ONLY) to funny@looking.ON.CA Attribute the joke's source if at all possible. A Daemon will auto-reply. Remember: Only ONE joke per submission. Extra jokes may be rejected.