With such a large selection of programming languages it can be difficult to choose one for a particular project. Reading the manuals to evaluate the languages is a time consuming process. On the other hand, most people al- ready have a fairly good idea of how various automobiles compare. So in order to assist those trying to choose a language, we have prepared a chart that matches programming languages with comparable automobiles.

Assembler A Formula I race car. Very fast, but difficult to drive and expensive to maintain.

FORTRAN II A Model T Ford. Once it was king of the road.

FORTRAN IV A Model A Ford.

FORTRAN 77 A six-cylinder Ford Fairlane with standard transmission and no seat belts.

COBOL A delivery van. It’s bulky and ugly, but it does the work.

BASIC A second-hand Rambler with a rebuilt engine and patched upholstery. Your dad bought it for you to learn to drive. You’ll ditch the car as soon as you can afford a new one.

PL/I A Cadillac convertible with automatic transmission, a two-tone paint job, white-wall tires, chrome exhaust pipes, an fuzzy dice hanging in the windshield.

C A black Firebird, the all-macho car. Comes with optional seat belts (lint) and optional fuzz buster (escape to assembler).

ALGOL 60 An Austin Mini. Boy, that’s a small car!

Pascal A Volkswagen Beetle. It’s small but sturdy. Was once popular with intellectuals.

Modula II A Volkswagen Rabbit with a trailer hitch.

ALGOL 68 An Aston Martin. An impressive car, but not just anyone can drive it.

LISP An electric car. It’s simple but slow. Seat belts are not available.

PROLOG/LUCID Prototype concept-cars.

Maple/MACSYMA All-terrain vehicles.

FORTH A go-cart.

LOGO A kiddie’s replica of a Rolls Royce. Comes with a real engine and a working horn.

APL A double-decker bus. It takes rows and columns of passengers to the same place all at the same time. But, it drives only in reverse gear, and is instrumented in Greek.

Ada An army-green Mercedes-Benz staff car. Power steering, power brakes and automatic transmission are all standard. No other colors or options are available. If it’s good enough for the generals, it’s good enough for you. Manufacturing delays due to difficulties reading the design specifications are starting to clear up.

1. LOG ON: Makin a wood stove hotter.

2. LOG OFF: Don’t add no more wood.

3. MONITOR: Keepin an eye on the wood stove.

4. DOWNLOAD: Gettin the farwood off the truk.

5. MEGA HERTZ: When yer not kerful gettin the farwood.

6. FLOPPY DISC: Whatcha git from tryin to carry too much farwood.

7. RAM: That thar thing whut splits the farwood.

8. HARD DRIVE: Gettin home in the winter time.

9. PROMPT: Whut the mail ain’t in the winter time.

10. WINDOWS: Whut to shut wen it’s cold outside.

11. SCREEN: Whut to shut wen it’s blak fly season.

12. BYTE: Whut them dang flys do.

13. CHIP: Munchies fer the TV.

14. MICRO CHIP: Whut’s in the bottom of the munchie bag.

15. MODEM: Whut cha did to the hay fields.

16. DOT MATRIX: Old Dan Matrix’s wife.

17. LAP TOP: Whar the kitty sleeps.

18. KEYBOARD: Whar ya hang the dang keys.

19. SOFTWARE: Them dang plastic forks and knifs.

20. MOUSE: Whut eats the grain in the barn.

21. MAINFRAME: Holds up the barn roof.

22. PORT: Fancy Flatlander wine

23. ENTER: Northerner talk fer “C’mon in y’all”

24. RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY: Wen ya cain’t ‘member whut ya paid fer the rifle when yore wife asks.

Overheard in a computer shop:
Customer “I’d like a mouse mat, please.”
Salesperson “Certainly sir, we’ve got a large variety.”
Customer “But will they be compatible with my computer?”

I once received a fax with a note on the bottom to fax the document back to the sender when I was finished with it, because he needed to keep it.

Customer in computer shop “Can you copy the Internet onto this disk for me?”

I work for a local ISP. Frequently we receive phone calls that start something like this Customer “Hi. Is this the Internet?”

Customer “So that’ll get me connected to the Internet, right?”
Tech Support “Yeah.”
Customer “And that’s the latest version of the Internet, right?”
Tech Support “Uhh…uh…uh…yeah.”

Tech Support “All right…now double-click on the File Manager icon.”
Customer “That’s why I hate this Windows – because of the icons – I’m a Protestant, and I don’t believe in icons.”
Tech Support “Well, that’s just an industry term sir.I don’t believe it was meant to-”
Customer “I don’t care about any ‘Industry Terms’. I don’t believe in icons.”
Tech Support “Well…why don’t you click on the ‘little picture’ of a filing cabinet…is ‘little picture’ OK?”
Customer [click]

Customer “My computer crashed!”
Tech Support “It crashed?”
Customer “Yeah, it won’t let me play my game.”
Tech Support “All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot.”
Customer “No, it didn’t crash-it crashed.”
Tech Support “Huh?”
Customer “I crashed my game. That’s what I said before. I crashed my spaceship and now it doesn’t work.”
Tech Support “Click on ‘File,’ then ‘New Game.'”
Customer [pause] “Wow! How’d you learn how to do that?”

Got a call from a woman said that her laser printer was having problems the bottom half of her printed sheets were coming out blurry. It seemed strange that the printer was smearing only the bottom half.I walked her through the basics, then went over and printed out a test sheet. It printed fine. I asked her to print a sheet, so she sent a job to the printer.
As the paper started coming out, she yanked it out and showed it to me. I told her to wait until the paper came out on its own.
Problem solved.

I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard’s DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just couldn’t solve.
She could not print yellow. All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow.
I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers.Nothing worked. I asked my coworkers for help; they offered no new ideas.After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly,”Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow paper?”

A man attempting to set up his new printer called the printer’s tech support number, complaining about the error message “Can’t find the printer.” On the phone, the man said he even held the printer up in front of the screen, but the computer still couldn’t find it.

And another user was all confused about why the cursor always moved in the opposite direction from the movement of the mouse. She also complained that the buttons were difficult to depress. She was very embarrassed when we asked her to rotate the mouse so the tail pointed away from her.

Customer “Hello? I’m trying to dial in. I installed the software okay, and it dialed fine. I could hear that. Then I could hear the two computers connecting. But then the sound all stopped, so I picked up the phone to see if they were still connected, and I got the message, ‘No carrier,’ on my screen. What’s wrong?”

An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a Windows installation that had gone terribly wrong.
Customer “I brought my Windows disks from work to install them on my home computer.” Training stresses that we are “not the Software Police,” so I let the little act of piracy slide.
Tech Support “Umm-hmm. What happened?”
Customer “As I put each disk in it turns out they weren’t initialized.”
Tech Support “Do you remember the message exactly, ma’am?”
Customer (proudly) “I wrote it down. ‘This is not a Macintosh disk. Would you like to initialize it?'”
Tech Support “Er, what happened next?”
Customer “After they were initialized, all the disks appeared to be blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I can’t read them in the A drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is our only set of Windows disks for the whole office. Did I do something wrong?”

For a computer programming class, I sat directly across from someone, and our computers were facing away from each other. A few minutes into the class, she got up to leave the room. I reached between our computers and switched the inputs for the keyboards. She came back and started typing and immediately got a distressed look on her face. She called the tutor over and explained that no matter what she typed, nothing would happen.
The tutor tried everything. By this time I was hiding behind my monitor and quaking red-faced. I typed, “Leave me alone!” They both jumped back as this appeared on their screen. “What the…” the tutor said. I typed, “I said leave me alone!” The kid got real upset. “I didn’t do anything to it, I swear!” It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud. The conversation between them and HAL 2000 went on for an amazing five minutes.
Me “Don’t touch me!”
Her “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit your keys that hard.”
Me “Who do you think you are anyway?!”
Etc.
Finally, I couldn’t contain myself any longer, and fell out of my chair laughing. After they had realized what I had done, they both turned beet red. Funny, I never got more than a C- in that class.

This guy calls in to complain that he gets an “Access Denied” message every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his username and password in capital letters.
Tech Support “Ok, let’s try once more, but use lower case letters.”
Customer “Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard.”

Email from a friend “CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?”

My friend was on duty in the main lab on a quiet afternoon. He noticed a young woman sitting in front of one of the workstations with her arms crossed across her chest, staring at the screen. After about 15 minutes he noticed that she was still in the same position, only now she was impatiently tapping her foot. He asked if she needed help and she replied “It’s about time! I pressed the F1 button over twenty minutes ago!”

10. “Is it those Russians again? Call Kaspersky Labs and tell them this time I’m mad!”

9. “The security breach did not involve a security vulnerability in any Microsoft product.”

8. “Steve, if this keeps up I’m going to have to get medieval on you.”

7. “Hmm. Larry Ellison must have found those Post-It Notes with the passwords that I threw in the trash the other day.”

6. It’s not a hack, it’s a feature!”

5. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got to make everything simple and reliable. So what are the key elements for this future Internet? Well, extremely high availability, extremely high security, interoperability of all the different systems connected up, the new programming platform that I talked about, and then of course incredible performance to deal with the heavy usage that it’s all going to receive.”

4. “Can I please just have my prune juice without you guys bugging me with bad news first thing in the morning!”

3. “Steve, if this keeps up I’m going to have to pull a Steve Jobs on you.”

2. “Excuse me, I have to go relieve my Nervous Digital System.”

1. “Oh, s – – t.”

10. dam.mit.edu
9. monarch.butterfly.net
8. gratuitouslylonghostname.apana.org.au
7. drag.net
6. my-hostname-is-longer-than-yours.mit.edu
5. tragically.hip.berkeley.edu
4. dislocated.hip.berkeley.edu
3. ohsaycan.ucc.american.edu
2. huh_huh.fire.com
1. vo.mit.edu

PCMCIA
People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms

ISDN
It Still Does Nothing

APPLE
Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity

SCSI
System Can’t See It

DOS
Defunct Operating System

BASIC
Bill’s Attempt to Seize Industry Control

IBM
I Blame Microsoft

DEC
Do Expect Cuts

CD-ROM
Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months

OS/2
Obsolete Soon, Too.

WWW
World Wide Wait

MACINTOSH
Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs

Ideas Bring Money
Insidious Byzantine Mentality
Intergalactic Bottomline Mistake
Inevitably Bad Marketing
Indecision Breeds Mistakes
Inshallah Burak Ma’lesh
Imensa Bola De Manteca
Iconoclastic Bilateral Monopoly
Incontinent Bandolerisimo Moloch
Imperial Bellicose Marauder
Impious Bacchnalain Metropolis
I’d Buy Macintosh
Imbecile Bad Micros
Imperialist by Marketing
Intensely Boring Machines
Interesting But Mundane
Internals By Mediocrity
Into Building Money
Industry’s Bulging Monolith
Irresponsibility Behaved Multinational
Increasingly Bad Manufacturing
Insipidly Bankrolling Millions
Inconsistent Business machines
Innovation By Management
Industry Bowel Movement
I’m Being Manipulated
intercourse Beets Masturbation
Incredibly Bloody Minded
Incredibly Ballsey Marketeers
Intentionally Braindamaged Machinery
Idealistically Backwards Microcomputers
Idle Brain Malfunction
Imitable Boring Microcomputers
Impeccably Blue-dressed Managers
Itty Bitty Machines
International Bowel Movement
I bring manuals
I’ve Been Misled
Ifs Buts Maybys
It’s Better ‘morrow
Incompatible Blue Machines
Indigestion Bothers Me
Intersmashable Byte manipulators
I Broke Mine
Idiots Being Mental
I’ve Been Mauled
Invented By Maladroits
Invented By Marketing
Insulting Boorish Manner
Icons Bygones My Mom’s
I Breaks Monthly
Infinitely Baffling Motives
I’m Buying Macintosh
It’s Better Manually
Incredibly Big Monster
Itty Bitty Mentality
Incredible Bowel Movement
I’ve Been Mesmerized
Insignificant Bothersome Machine
It’s Broke Ma’am
In Business (for) Money
International Bit Mangler
Increasingly Banal Movement
Infernal Blue Machines
Insultingly Boring Microcomputers
Ill-mannered Besotten Macrocasm
Immeasurable Bigheaded Malapert
Impersonal Bellicose Magnate
Insolent Bickering Mal-der-mer
Indecorous Big-named Medusoid
Inept Bulling Menace
Incredibly Bullying Menace
Incredibly Boastful Mercenary
Immovable Brash Monolith
Inferior Before Macintosh
Ici Beaucoup Merde
I’m Beyond Mistakes
I’ve Been Mangled
Inherently Bad Manuals
I’ll Buy Macintosh
It’s Beyond Monolithic
Install Bigger Memory
Infernal Biggest Mistake
Incredibly Broad Monolopy
Intriguingly Blue Motif
Incredibly Bad Merchandising
It’s Bugging Me
Itty Bitty Mouse
I Bring Madness
Incredibly Big Manufacturer
Industry’s Biggest Mistake
I Built Mine
Inane Brutish Merchandising
Infinite Budget Merchandising
It’s Bullshit Mommery
It’s Become Monolithic
Inadequates Becoming Millionaires
I’d Be Misinforming
Idiots Became Managers
Incredibly Boring Manuals
Incredibly Belligerent Merketing
Interesting But Mediocre
Invented By Murphy
Insanely Better Marketing
Illustrious Busy Mice
Itty Bity Maharishi
It’s Been Malfunctioning
Ill’manners Being Mandatory
It Broke Be
Illustrious Bankruptcy Malenfactor
Insensitivity Begets Mediocrity
I’ve Become Magnanimous
I Blame Mathematics

[I]diots
[B]uilt
[M]e

[M]achine
[A]lways
[C]rashes.
[I]f
[N]ot,
[T]he
[O]perating
[S]ystem
[H]angs

You may be addicted to the Internet, if …

You wake up at 2 a.m. to go to the bathroom and stop and check your e-mail on the way back to bed.

You get a tattoo that reads “This body best viewed with Netscape 4.0 or higher.”

You name your children Mosaic, Java and Eudora.

You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one.

You spend half of the plane trip with your laptop on your lap … and your child in the overhead compartment.

You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free Internet access.

You laugh at people with 9600-baud modems.

You start using smileys in your snail mail.

The last girl you picked up was a JPEG.

Only communication in your household is through email.

You refuse to go to a vacation spot with no electricity and no phone lines.

All your daydreaming is preoccupied with getting a faster connection to the net: 28.8…ISDN…cable modem…T1…T3.

And even your night dreams are in HTML.

You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.

Your heart races faster and beats irregularly each time you see a new WWW site address in print or on TV, even though you’ve never had heart problems before.

All of your friends have an @ in their names.

You chat several times a day with a stranger from South Africa but haven’t spoken to your next-door neighbor yet this year.

You refer to your age as 3.x.

You code your homework in HTML and give your instructor the URL.

You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape.

You really did ask a plumber how much it would cost to replace the chair in front of your computer with a toilet.

I.V. stand next to your mini tower.

Choice between paying Compuserve bill and paying for kids education is easy — if a little painful for your kids.

AT&T names you Customer of the Month for the third consecutive time.

Your phone bill comes to your doorstep in a box.

You have to install a second phone line just so you can call Pizza Hut.

You hide the bill from the spouse because you may have to sell the family car to pay it.

Your wife drapes a wig over your monitor to remind you of what she looks like.

Batteries in the TV remote now last for months.

You hire a housekeeper for your home page.

Your dog has its own home page too.

New mail alarm on your palmtop annoys other churchgoers.

Your mouse-clicking forearm rivals Popeye’s.

Your household pets mimic the soundblaster card for attention.

You unsuccessfully try to download a pizza from www.dominos.com.

You try to order a movie from Blockbuster video by downloading it at 28,800 BPS.

You check your mail. It says “no new messages.” So you check it again.

You can’t call your mother … she doesn’t have a modem.

You tell the taxi driver you live at http://1100.sunset.ave/mansion/brick.html

You’re upset because an obituary fails to mention the deceased’s new E-Mail address.

You try to pay the babysitter via electronic transfer.

You start tilting your head sideways to smile.

When your car is crashing through the guardrail on a mountain road, your first instinct is to search for the Back button.

You want to meet someone new and your first impulse is to turn on your computer.

You double click your TV remote

You try to enter your password on the microwave.

Three words: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

You come back and check this list every half-hour.