I found the following in a FIDO Net "newsgroup" (how were they called in those days?) back in 1992:
(The folloowing is from "The Real Times", a newsletter of the Greater Boston Chapter of ACM.)
"Which computer language is right for you?" by Simon Walmsley and Steve Suttles
In order to help you make a competent, uncomplicated choice concerning the competition between complex, incompatible computer compilers, we have composed this complete, compact, composite compendium comprising comparisons to compensate for the complaints and complements of their compromises. We hope you will find it comprehensible rather than compost.
- 6502
- You shoot yourself in the foot.
- 68000
- You can't decide which gun and which bullet to use, so you hang yourself.
- 8080
- You foot yourself in the shoot.
- Z80...
- Ada
- The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette.
- Assembler
- LDA BULLET -- STA FOOT
- APL
- GN (* Upside down triangle *) FT ^ BLT
- BASIC (interpreted)
- You shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol until your leg is waterlogged and falls off.
- BASIC (compiled)
- You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a Scud missle launcher.
- C
- You shoot yourself in the foot and then no one else can figure out what you did.
- C++
- You create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Not knowing which feet are virtual, medical care is impossible.
- COBOL
- USE HANDGUN.COLT(45), AIM AT LEG.FOOT, THEN WITH ARM.HAND.FINGER ON HANDGUN.-COLT(TRIGGER) PERFORM SQUEEZE, RETURN HANDGUN.COLT TO HIP.HOLSTER
- csh
- After searching the manual until your foot falls asleep, you shoot the computer and switch to C.
- dBase
- You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one that is scheduled to actually shoot bullets.
- FORTH
- Foot Bullet shootInto.
- FORTRAN
- EQUIVALENCE (BULLET, FOOT)
You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes. You shoot the sixth bullet anyway, since no exception processing was anticipated.- Modula-2
- You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.
- Pascal
- Same as Modula-2, except the bullet is not of the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.
- occam
- You shoot both your feet with several guns a once.
- ORCA/C
- Byteworks keeps promising to supply good ammunition RSN!
- Pascal
- Same as Modula-2, except the bullet is not of the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.
- PL/1
- After comsuming all system resources including bullets, the data processing department doubles its size, acquires two new mainframes and drops the original on your foot.
- Prolog (interpreted)
- Your program tries to shoot you in the foot, but you die of old age before the bullet leaves the gun.
- Prolog (compiled)
- The facts are against you. You try to stop the gun from shooting you in the foot, but it replies "No."
- Smalltalk (?)
- After playing with the graphics for three weeks the programming manager shoots you in the head.
- Snobol
- Grab your foot with your hand and rewrite your hand to be a bullet.
- TECO
- @fs/bullet/foot/