The proliferation of modern programming languages which seem to have stolen countless features from each other sometimes makes it difficult to remember which language you're using. This guide is offered as a public service to help programmers in such dilemmas.

      

       C
            You shoot yourself in the foot.

       C++
            You accidently 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 (NeXT)
            You write a protocol for shooting yourself in the foot
            so that all people can get shot in their feet.
  
       Ada
            If you are dumb enough to actually use this language,
            the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you,
            stand you up in front of a firing squad, and tell the
            soldiers, "Shoot at his feet."

            or
  
            After correctly packaging 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 that your foot is of the wrong type.
  
       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.
  
       Pascal
            The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.
  
       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.
  
            or
  
            You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day
            figuring out how to do it fewer characters.
  
       Assembly
            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 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 really only appear to have shot 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.

       Forth
            yourself foot shoot.

       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.

       Modula/2
            After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything
            in the language, you shoot yourself in the head.

       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.

       Smalltalk
            You spend so much time playing with the graphics and
            windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot,
            takes away your workstation, and makes you develop in
            COBOL on a character terminal.

       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.

       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.

            or

            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.

       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).

            or

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

       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 disks instead.

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

       English
            You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off.

       CLIPPER
            You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that
            you can shoot yourself in the foot, and discover that the gun
            that the bullet fits has not yet been built, but should
            be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_.

       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.

       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.

       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.

       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.

       Java
            You create a bullet applet and shoot over the net into Bill Gates
            foot.

       Synopsis
            You want to figure out how to shoot into your foot while you
            accidently drop the manual. It smashes your foot and crashes
            through the floor until it reaches the cellar.