A tourist walked into a pet shop and was looking at the animals on
display. While he was there, another customer walked in and went over to
a cage at the side of the shop and took out a monkey.
He fit a collar and leash, handed it to the customer, saying,
"That'll be $5000." 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 the 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 its 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 a consultant."