The Dieing Programmers

One morning on #lisp we did some mental and creative warm-up by wondering how programmers die in their respective programming languages.

Alas, of course we know we are immortal, we can't DIE in that sense. But what do we do instead when we shuffle off the mortal coil? Here are some hints:

"Java programmers don't die. They just throw without catch."

C programmers don't die either. They segfault.

Basic programmers gosub without return.

What do Lisp programmers do?

unwind-protect

Basic. To boldly goto where no programmer has written code before...

Lisp programmers never die; they just call a restart

(Clisp programmers try to call a restart, but the implementation is buggy.)

APL users don't die either. They get mumified in case anyone ever needs to decipher their programs in the future...

Jabberwockey: no that's perl

Jabberwockey: actually, not even they could understand what they wrote

APLers don't die; they just become another operator

emu: Haskell users don't die either. They get caught by a guard.

nah, they're too lazy to die

Lisp programmers get garbage collected...

ML programmers are frozen

haskellers get curried

so do MLers tho

SQL programmers don't die, they just unwind the transaction.

Prolog users don't die, they get cut

they backtrack

C++ programmers don't die; they have to read template code forever

so finally, Java programmers don't die; they just degenerate into primitive types

Visual Basic programmers don't die. That's what the MS API is for.

Kernel hackers don't die; they panic

Mozilla programmers will die when they reach version 1.0. In other words: never. [keeping on dissing the free ice cream, Jabberwockey: this edit being made in Mozilla v 1.4 at 4 oct 2003]

IRC-using programmers don't die, they just QUIT

"... they just get lost in the netsplit."

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