Metaphors We Compute By

We think in words, we talk with words, we understand the world thanks to words. Metaphors take words to the next level explaining concepts that were escaping our understanding before. In 1980 George Lakoff revolutionised the linguistic and philosophic worlds when he studied how metaphors affect our thinking, how they influence our actions and even shape who we are. What happens with the metaphors that we use in the software Industry?

In this talk we are going to review the importance that metaphors have in our code quality, in the algorithms we choose, and the products we ship.

As a practical example, we are going to see why Microservices and Containers have been so successful in the past couple of years. We'll try to understand why they have redefined how we package and ship products in our industry today.

Talk objectives:

• Show that the way we communicate in our code matters when it comes to explaining the problem we are actually trying to solve. Having the right metaphor can be the difference between a successful project from a failed one.

Target audience:

• Developers interested in learning how to communicate better, in code, in documentation, whether with computers or other humans.