



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.

This article is translated to Web Geeks.

C

You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++

You accidentally create a dozen clones 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.”

JAVA

After importing java.awt.right.foot.* and java.awt.gun.right.hand.*, and writing the classes and methods of those classes needed, you’ve forgotten what the hell you’re doing.

Ruby

Your foot is ready to be shot in roughly five minutes, but you just can’t find anywhere to shoot it.

PHP

You shoot yourself in the foot with a gun made with pieces from 300 other guns.

ASP.NET

Find a gun, it falls apart. Put it back together, it falls apart again. You try using the .GUN Framework, it falls apart. You stab yourself in the foot instead.

SQL

SELECT @ammo:=bullet FROM gun WHERE trigger = ‘PULLED’;

INSERT INTO leg (foot) VALUES (@ammo);

Perl

You shoot yourself in the foot, but nobody can understand how you did it. Six months later, neither can you. (via Andy)

Javascript

YOu’ve perfected a robust, rich user experience for shooting yourself in the foot. You then find that bullets are disabled on your gun.

CSS

You shoot your right foot with one hand, then switch hands to shoot your left foot but you realize that the gun has turned into a banana.

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.

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 HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.

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 ….

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 in 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 the foot of the left 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

% ls

%

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.

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. After that’s done, you pull the trigger, the gun beeps several times, then crashes.

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.

Python

You try to shoot yourself in the foot but you just keep hitting the whitespace between your toes. (via Marco Azaro)

Disclaimer: I didn’t write the original article, though I’ve added to it. I have had the funnier definitions above listed in a text file for several years, and I decided to add my own one day.