How to Shoot Yourself In the Foot Using Any Programming Language

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

brainfuck
Just looking at the gun gives you a migrane, so forget about actually shooting it.

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

C
You try to shoot yourself in the foot, but find out the the gun is actually a howitzer cannon.

C++
You accidentally create a dozen clones of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. 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."

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.

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

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.

DOS Batch
You aim the gun at your foot and pull the trigger, but only a weak gust of warm air hits your foot.

Forth
Foot in yourself 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-handling ability.

HyperTalk
Put the first bullet of the gun into the foot of the left leg of you.
Answer the result.

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.

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.

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...

Machine Language
Before you can shoot yourself in the foot you must disassemble the gun at the atomic level and then reassemble it. After you do this, you find that the bullets require a special operator so the gun doesn't work.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

PL/I
You discover 6,752 different guns for shooting yourself in the foot. Before you can decide which one to use, you starve to death.

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.

Python
You try to shoot yourself in the foot but you just keep hitting the whitespace between your toes.

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

RPG
First you define your gun, bullet, and firing pin. Then, you define your foot, toes, and toenails. Then, you open chamber and load the gun. Then, you cock it. Now you're finally ready to shoot yourself in the foot.

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

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

SQL
SELECT @ammo:=bullet FROM gun WHERE trigger = 'PULLED';
INSERT INTO leg (foot) VALUES (@ammo);

UNIX
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm: .o: No such file or directory
% ls
%

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

Visual BASIC.NET
You spend a fortune on a high-powered, self-cleaning, self-aiming, automatic handgun with unlimited ammo, only to realize it takes a year to pull the trigger.

Visual FoxPro
You mock other sharpshooters for not being able to shoot both feet at once, but when you try to do it yourself you realize that you can't properly handle the Microsoft.gun ActiveX.


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