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 quide is offered 
as a service to help programmers who find themselves 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 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 anyway because you have no exception-handling ability.

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

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

BASIC: Shoot yourself in foot with 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.

Concurrent Euclid: You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.

Motif: You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory,
the bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handle 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 % ls %

XBase: Shooting yourself is no problem.  If you want to shoot yourself in
the foot, you'll have to use Clipper.

Paradox: Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.

Reveration: 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.