A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on display. While he was there, another customer walked in and said to the
shopkeeper, "I'll have a C monkey please."
The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage at the other side of the shop and took out a monkey. He fit a collar and leash, handed it to the customer, saying, "That'll be $5,000." The customer paid and walked out with his monkey.
Startled, the tourist went over to the shopkeeper and said, "That was a very expensive monkey. Most of them are only a few hundred dollars. Why did it cost so much?"
The shopkeeper answered, "Ah, that monkey can program in C-very fast, tight code, no bugs, well worth the money."
The tourist looked at a monkey in another cage. "That one's even more expensive! $10,000. What does it do?"
"Oh, that one's a C++ monkey. It can manage object-oriented programming. Visual C++, even some Java. All the really useful stuff," said
the shopkeeper.
The tourist looked around for a little longer and saw a third monkey in a cage of its own. The price tag around it's neck read $50,000.
He gasped to the shopkeeper, "That one costs more than all the others put together! What on earth does it do?"
The shopkeeper replied, "Well, I haven't actually seen it do anything, but it says it's an engineer."