Smart Monkeys

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 don’t actually know, but the other two called him boss.”