The Developer's Code

Essay 1

Follow Metaphors with Care

And this is where things get dangerous.

Sometimes the line between analogy and reality blurs. Metaphors can make us value things that aren’t that important while undervaluing the things that are.

When we take these comparisons too far, we don’t make our best decisions. Metaphor has a devilish way of blinding us to the truth. Our decisions might make perfect sense in the context of the metaphor, but when stripped down to just the business of building applications, we can easily be led astray. We sometimes rely on the perceived benefits of the metaphor too heavily rather than paying attention to the reality of the situation.

For instance, we often use traditional architecture as a metaphor for building software. ...