I found the following very interesting, so I make a local copy here.
Disclaimer: It is not mine, see here for detail.
If programming languages were cars...
This is an update to an old series of jokes about computer languages being like cars. I've added some more modern languages to the list. Any suggestions are welcome!
- C is a racing car that goes incredibly fast but breaks down every fifty miles.
- C++ is a souped-up racing car with dozens of extra features that only breaks down every 250 miles, but when it does, nobody can figure out what went wrong.
- Java is a family station wagon. It's easy to drive, it's not too fast, and you can't hurt yourself.
- C# is a competing model of family station wagons. Once you use this, you're never allowed to use the competitors' products again.
- Ocaml is a very sexy European car. It's not quite as fast as C, but it never breaks down, so you end up going further in less time. However, because it's French, none of the controls are in the usual places.
- Lisp looks like a car, but with enough tweaking it can turn into a pretty effective airplane or submarine.
- Prolog is fully automatic: you tell it what your destination looks like, and it does all the driving for you.
- Perl is supposed to be a pretty cool car, but the driver's manual is incomprehensible. Also, even if you can figure out how to drive a perl car, you won't be able to drive anyone else's.
- Python is a great beginner's car; you can drive it without a license. Unless you want to drive really fast or on really treacherous terrain, you may never need another car.
- Fortran is a pretty primitive car; it'll go very quickly as long as you are only going along roads that are perfectly straight. It is believed that learning to drive a Fortran car makes it impossible to learn to drive any other model.
- Cobol is reputed to be a car, but no self-respecting driver will ever admit having driven one.
- Forth is a car you build yourself from a kit. Your car doesn't have to look or behave like anyone else's car. However, a Forth car will only go backwards.
- Assembly is a bare engine; you have to build the car yourself and manually supply it with gas while it's running, but if you're careful it can go like a bat out of hell.
