The Excel Monkey

Вариация известного анекдота. В оригинале первая обезьяна умела кодировать на С, вторая в дополнение знала C++, Java и OOP, а третья была project manager'ом.

A tourist went into a pet shop and started looking around. While he was doing so, a customer came in and said to the shopkeeper, "Do you have an Excel monkey?"

The shopkeeper nodded, went over to a cage, and brought out a monkey. He put it on a lead and handed it over to the customer, saying "That will be £3,000." The customer paid and walked out of the shop with the monkey.

The tourist was amazed. He went over to the shopkeeper and said, "That's a huge amount to pay for a monkey. Why on Earth was it so expensive?" The shopkeeper answered, "The monkey can write Excel spreadsheets. It's very quick, never makes mistakes, and knows all the built-in functions. If you need any spreadsheets written, it's just the thing for the job."

The tourist looked at another monkey in the cage. "This one is even more expensive. It's £5,000 — what can it do?" The shopkeeper said, "Oh, that's a Web monkey. It's an expert Web developer, can code interactive pages, handle graphic design, give presentations, everything you need."

The tourist looked around the shop a bit more, and then spotted a third monkey in a cage. The label round this one's neck read £25,000. Dumbfounded, he walked up to the shopkeeper and said: "This costs more than all the others put together! What does it do?" The shopkeeper answered, "Well, I've never actually seen it do anything useful. But the other monkeys call it an administrator."

[from Dobbs Code Talk]