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How programmers hunt elephants

Friday, March 22, 2002 How Programmers Hunt Elephants
December 23, 1999

CLIPPER programmers don't actually hunt elephants, they just buy libraries of elephant parts and then spend years trying to integrate them.

DBASE programmers only hunt elephants at night when no one will notice that they are still using crossbows.

FOXPRO programmers switch to newer and better rifles every few days which causes them to spend more time learning new shooting techniques than actually hunting.

C programmers refuse to buy rifles off the shelf, preferring to take steel rods and a mobile machine shop to Africa intending to build the perfect rifle for the job from scratch.

PARADOX programmers go to Africa with copies of Hollywood movie scripts about elephant hunting, the re-enactment of which they believe will help them catch an elephant.

ACCESS programmers zero right in on an elephant right away, even with no prior experience in elephant hunting, and then, impeccably dressed and fully looking the part, get the elephant in their beuatifully-mounted scopes, and then realize that other than missing a trigger, they are 99.9% 'there'.

RBASE programmers are rarer than elephants. In fact, when an elephant sees an RBASE programmer he considers it a luck day.

VISUAL ACCESS programmers point at their bullets, point at their rifles, then point at the elephant. This amuses the elephants, who run away. They are unable to persue the elephant because their jeeps are undriveable having steering wheels, yokes, joy sticks and rudders, due to their love of multiple controls.

ADA, APL, and FORTRAN programmers are just as fictional as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

COBOL programmers have too much empathy to hunt another near-extinct species