OK - I can't get there...

Benjamin A. Holzman benjamin.a.holzman at bender.com
Wed Feb 10 14:38:25 CST 1999


The yapc page - cs.cmu.edu/ what? ~lorenzo is what I remembered - but I DID
have a barley wine!

Would you mind if I bothered you with another stupid (ie: beginners - the
problem with no formal training!) UNIX question?

Then there is this:

                       SHOOTING YOURSELF IN THE FOOT
(light relief from the internet contributed by 'our foreign correspondent')

The proliferation of modern programming languages (all of which seem to have
stolen countless features from one another) sometimes makes it difficult to
remember what language you're currently using.  This guide is offered as a
public service to help programmers who find themselves in such dilemmas.

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, than you read in the next foot and repeat.  If you run out of bullets,
you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling ability.

Modula2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this
language, you shoot yourself in the head.

COBOL: Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place
ARM.HAND.FINGER. on  ANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE.  THEN return HANDGUN to
HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied. 

LISP: shoot, action (pull, (object, trigger)) target (foot, (appendage,
attached (attached attached (attached, hand), arm) body, leg)) (foot, so
called)))))) You hire 3 PhD's to get the parentheses and comas in the right
places, and then execute (by hitting <Ctrl><shft><alt><BkSpace><Y13>).  The
bullet speeds towards your foot like a Guppy swimming thru molasses, pausing
every 2 inches for garbage collection to take place. Your foot dies of
terminal boredom.

Fuzzy Logic: You are 60% certain you shoot something. If you do, there is a
60% chance it was a foot. If it was a foot, then 60% likely it was yours.
Your foot breathes a sigh of relief, since it is 78.4% probable you didn't
shoot yourself in it. Various other bits of anatomy, mostly other peoples',
are seen heading for cover, having done their own sums.

DOS: When you break the license agreement/seal on your MSDOS 7.0 package, a
loaded revolver drops out and shoots you in the foot for free, since Bill
Gates has defined shot-feet to be THE industry standard. Digital Research
announce that DRDOS 8.0 will shoot BOTH feet, however Microsoft warns that
only their bullet wounds can be guaranteed compatible with Windows 4.0.

BASIC: Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol.  On big systems,
continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

FORTH: Foot in yourself shoot.

APL: You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to
do it fewer characters.

Pascal: The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.

SNOBOL: If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot.  If you fail, shoot
yourself in the right 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 % is

%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 these bullets are for.

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

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.

Ada: 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.

Assembly: You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must
first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.

.. Anyone want to submit one for perl?

Jack Chastain
Lucent Technologies
67 Whippany Road
Whippany NJ 07981
(973) 386-3246
chastain at lucent.com <mailto:chastain at lucent.com> 
jack.chastain at bigfoot.com <mailto:jack.chastain at bigfoot.com> 


        ----------
        From:  Benjamin A. Holzman [SMTP:benjamin.a.holzman at bender.com]
        Sent:  Wednesday, January 27, 1999 12:25 PM
        To:  albany-pm-list at happyfunball.pm.org
        Subject:  Report on yesterday's meeting


             In attendance at yesterday's meeting at Malt River:
             
             Ken Briggs
             Eric Forste
             Clark Cooper
             Synthe "Dan" Omicron
             Jerry Ela
             Jack Chastain <-- ALL THE WAY FROM NEWBURGH! WAY TO GO, JACK!
             
             Unfortunately, I was unable to attend.  However, the report
from Ken 
             and Eric is that a good time, beer and fries were had by all.
Well, I 
             don't think Dan had any beer.  But I digress.
             
             There was some discussion that a monthly meeting might be
better than 
             bi-weekly, as I had suggested, but I think that I'd like to
keep it to 
             bi-weekly for now, with the understanding that nobody's
obligated to 
             come if they don't want to.
             
             You should all also feel free to use this mailing list to ask 
             questions or to describe the cool thing you just did.  I think
that 
             would be nice.  Just send mail to albany-pm-list at hfb.pm.org.
             
             Ben
        



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Subject: OK - I can't get there...
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