A tourist walks into a pet shop in Silicon Valley and is browsing the cages on display. While there, a customer walks in and says to the shopkeeper, “I’ll have a C monkey, please.” The shopkeeper nods, goes over to a cage, and takes out a monkey. He fits a collar and leash and hands it to the customer, saying, “That’ll be $5,000.” The customer pays and walks out with his monkey. Startled, the tourist says to the shopkeeper, “That was a very expensive monkey—most of them are only a few hundred dollars. Why did that one cost so much?”
“Ah, that monkey can program in C—very fast, tight code, no bugs, well worth the money.” The tourist looks at the monkeys in that 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.” The tourist sees a third monkey in a cage on its own. The price tag around its neck says $50,000. Startled, he says to the shopkeeper, “That one costs more than all the others combined! What on earth does it do?”
“Well, I don’t know if it does anything, it’s a Consultant.”
