It started with this Code Craft blog post on the Code Garden – an analogy that sucked less. It got me thinking and ranting about metaphors in software and metaphors of software. Designing your technical architecture with software, the XP “Metaphor” practice, metaphors for HCI, metaphors like those used in the Head First series and Ajax Patterns to explain concepts, metaphors to explain what software is to managers. Where do they make sense and where is it plain wrong to try and explain software with a metaphor.

22 minutes.