The Trouble with Analogies
On the way home, from work, in the car I was thinking…
People use analogies a lot in IT and rightly so analogies help people transfer knowledge of one simple thing they understand to a more complicated thing they don’t (yet). The trouble with analogies is that people take them too far and they no longer fit. It is somewhat a kin to taking your knowledge of grade school physics and using it to try and discover the Grand Unified Theory.
There we have it I have used an analogy to show the problems with analogies, an analogy of analogies, maybe I’m spending too much time in the car these days.
August 31st, 2006 at 10:53 pm
Analogies are often the most powerful tool we have to explain what we do in IT. I would add that picking the right analogy is just as important as not taking it too far. Take a look at the construction analogy. This favours the waterfall method of software design where it is possible to know everything up front. I have not been on a single project where that happened.
If you wait until the design of a building is done before starting it, you are in good shape. If you wait until the design of software is done before starting it, you will start it.