Metaphors for Software Development

Metaphors for Software Development

A note after reading book "Code Complete", all the copyright belong to the book.

  Important development often arise out of analogies, By comparing a topic you understand poorly to something similiar you understand better, you can come up with insights that result in a better understanding of the less-familiar topic. This use of metaphor is called "modeling".

  A software metaphor is more like a searchlight than a road map. It doesn't tell you where to find answer;it tells you how to look for it. A metaphor serves more as a heuristic than it does as an algorithm.

  Common Software Metaphors:

• Writing software is a science---David Gries, 1981
• It's an art---Donald Knuth,1988
• It's a process---Watts Humphrey,1989
• It's like driving a car, although they draw nearly opposite conclusions---P.J.Plauger and Kent Beck
• It's like farming, hunting werewolves,or drowing with dinosaurs in a tar pit---Fred Brooks 1995

     If you got a bad metaphor, it also will mislead you, so try to find the better and suitable metaphor is important!