Found this online somewhere while I was working at Grey Matter, and I’ve had it printed out ever since. So I can recycle the hardcopy, I’m reproducing it here. Feel free to add your own contributions in the comments :)
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 toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue with the attempts to shoot yourself anyway because you have no exception-handling capability.
- Pascal: The compiler won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot.
- 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, 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 …
- 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 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 the gun into foot left of log 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Paradox: Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, but your users can too.
- Access: You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distributions diskettes instead.
- 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.
- Modula2: After realising that you can’t actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.