[Coco] The Programmer's quick guide to the languages wasRe: OS9 Pascal

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 13 August 2007, Willard Goosey wrote:
>               The Programmer's Quick Guide to the Languages
>               =============================================
>
>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 handy
>reference is offered as a public service to help programmers who find
>themselves in such a dilemma.
>
>                      TASK: Shoot yourself 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.

In my experience it won't let you do anything because no matter how you write 
it, its an obscure syntax error.

>   * 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.

Yes, one should be sufficient.

>   * 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.

You can do that in System 36 rpg III too, but it comes back in only 42 hours, 
with a plaster cast, subjected to surgery that makes a mirror image out of 
it, and renamed to 'shinbone'.

We had one of those in traffic, it had a whopping 256kilowords of dram in it, 
and I used to tease the GM that we were running a tv station with a machine 
that had less ram in it than my office coco3, which at the time had 2 megs in 
it.  2 10 meg hard drives and 2 8" floppies.  Built like the usual IBM 
though, bulletproof.

>   * 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.

Apt.  Justifiable too. :)

>   * Revelation: You're sure you're going to be able to shoot yourself in
>     the foot, just as soon as you figure out what all these nifty little
>     bullet-thingies are for.
>
>   * 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.
>
But in assembler, the foot you must invent is wearing a bulletproof vest 
because you wrote it that way.  One could also write it so that it has a hole 
which exactly fits the bullet, my favorite technique. :)

>   * Modula2: After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything
>     in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.
>
Good for a chuckle with my first coffee of the day, thanks.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Linux - It is now safe to turn on your computer.

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