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.

Transcript

1. METAPHORS WE COMPUTE BY
   ALVARO VIDELA - @old_sound
   

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2. THE YEAR IS 1980
   

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3. METAPHORS WE LIVE BY
   GEORGE LAKOFF & MARK JOHNSON
   

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4. METAPHOR ISN’T JUST A
   MATTER OF POETRY AND
   RHETORICAL FLOURISH
   

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5. METAPHORS PERMEATE ALL AREAS OF OUR LIVES
   METAPHORS DICTATE
   

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6. METAPHORS PERMEATE ALL AREAS OF OUR LIVES
   METAPHORS DICTATE
   ▸ How we think
   

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7. METAPHORS PERMEATE ALL AREAS OF OUR LIVES
   METAPHORS DICTATE
   ▸ How we think
   ▸ How we behave
   

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8. METAPHORS PERMEATE ALL AREAS OF OUR LIVES
   METAPHORS DICTATE
   ▸ How we think
   ▸ How we behave
   ▸ How we perceive
   

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9. METAPHORS PERMEATE ALL AREAS OF OUR LIVES
   METAPHORS DICTATE
   ▸ How we think
   ▸ How we behave
   ▸ How we perceive
   ▸ How our conceptual system is built
   

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10. ARGUMENT IS WAR
    

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11. METAPHORS IN EVERYDAY EXPRESSIONS
    ARGUMENT IS WAR
    

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12. METAPHORS IN EVERYDAY EXPRESSIONS
    ARGUMENT IS WAR
    ▸ Your claims are indefensible
    

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13. METAPHORS IN EVERYDAY EXPRESSIONS
    ARGUMENT IS WAR
    ▸ Your claims are indefensible
    ▸ He attacked every weak point in my argument
    

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14. METAPHORS IN EVERYDAY EXPRESSIONS
    ARGUMENT IS WAR
    ▸ Your claims are indefensible
    ▸ He attacked every weak point in my argument
    ▸ I demolished his argument
    

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15. METAPHORS IN EVERYDAY EXPRESSIONS
    ARGUMENT IS WAR
    ▸ Your claims are indefensible
    ▸ He attacked every weak point in my argument
    ▸ I demolished his argument
    ▸ I never won an argument with him
    

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16. METAPHORS IN EVERYDAY EXPRESSIONS
    ARGUMENT IS WAR
    ▸ Your claims are indefensible
    ▸ He attacked every weak point in my argument
    ▸ I demolished his argument
    ▸ I never won an argument with him
    ▸ His criticisms were right on target
    

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17. WHAT IF ARGUMENT
    IS A DANCE?
    

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18. I’M NOT CONVINCED
    

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19. LET’S TALK ABOUT
    POLITICS
    

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20. I’M STILL NOT
    CONVINCED
    

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21. HUMAN RESOURCE
    MANAGEMENT
    

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22. PEOPLE ARE NOT RESOURCES
    

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23. TRIGGER
    WARNING
    

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24. GIVING A PLATFORM
    TO RACISTS
    

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25. “WRESTLING WITH
    INCLUSION AT XYZCONF”
    

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26. “WRESTLING WITH
    INCLUSION AT XYZCONF”
    

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27. LET’S TALK ABOUT
    COMPUTERS
    

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29. COMPUTERS
    

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30. METAPHORS ENABLE
    UNDERSTANDING
    

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31. JULIET IS LIKE THE SUN
    

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32. JULIET GAVE ME
    SKIN CANCER
    

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33. METAPHORS OBSCURE
    UNDERSTANDING
    

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34. TELE-GRAPH
    

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35. “SOMETIMES OUR TOOLS DO WHAT WE
    TELL THEM TO. OTHER TIMES, WE
    ADAPT OURSELVES TO OUR TOOLS'
    REQUIREMENTS”
    Nicholas Carr
    THE SHALLOWS
    

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36. METAPHORS ARE THE
    TOOLS OF THOUGHT
    

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37. METAPHORS AND
    CODE
    

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39. BEST UNKNOWN PAPER
    

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40. “TO PROGRAM IS TO WRITE TO
    ANOTHER PROGRAMMER
    ABOUT OUR SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM”
    Charles Baker
    A PROGRAMER’S ROLE
    

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41. “NO ONE HAS SEEN A PROGRAM
    WHICH THE MACHINE COULD NOT
    COMPREHEND BUT WHICH HUMANS
    DID”
    Charles Baker
    A PROGRAMER’S ROLE
    

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42. TYPES ARE THE CHARACTERS
    THAT TELL THE STORY OF
    OUR PROGRAMS
    

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43. PROGRAMMING WITH ABSTRACT DATA
    TYPES
    

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44. WITHOUT TYPES WE JUST
    HAVE OPERATIONS ON
    STREAM OF BYTES
    

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45. CHOOSING THE RIGHT
    DATA STRUCTURE
    

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46. CHOOSE THE RIGHT DATA STRUCTURE
    

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47. CHOOSE THE RIGHT DATA STRUCTURE
    ▸ Array
    

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48. CHOOSE THE RIGHT DATA STRUCTURE
    ▸ Array
    ▸ Set
    

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49. CHOOSE THE RIGHT DATA STRUCTURE
    ▸ Array
    ▸ Set
    ▸ LinkedList
    

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50. CHOOSE THE RIGHT DATA STRUCTURE
    ▸ Array
    ▸ Set
    ▸ LinkedList
    ▸ Queue
    

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51. CHOOSE THE RIGHT DATA STRUCTURE
    ▸ Array
    ▸ Set
    ▸ LinkedList
    ▸ Queue
    ▸ Stack
    

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52. A PROGRAM’S EXPLANATORY
    POWER IS THE MEASURE OF
    ITS OWN ELEGANCE
    

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53. DATA STRUCTURES
    HAVE EXPLANATORY
    POWER
    

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54. COGNITIVE LEAPS
    

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55. TASK SCHEDULING
    

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56. QUEUEING
    THEORY
    TASK SCHEDULING
    

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57. ROUTE PLANNING
    

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58. GRAPH THEORY
    ROUTE PLANNING
    

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59. DATABASE
    REPLICATION
    

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60. RUMOUR
    MONGERING
    DATABASE
    REPLICATION
    

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61. EPIDEMICS
    DATABASE
    REPLICATION
    

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62. SO EVERYTHING IS A
    METAPHOR?
    

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63. I DON’T BELIEVE YOU
    

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64. Whenever nodes need to agree on a
    common value, we start a consensus
    algorithm to decide on a value.
    There's usually a leader process that
    takes care of making the final
    decision based on the votes it has
    received from its peers.
    SEVEN METAPHORS
    DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS METAPHORS
    

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65. SEVEN METAPHORS
    DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS METAPHORS
    Nodes communicate sending
    messages over a channel, which
    might get congested due to too
    much traffic. This could create an
    information bottleneck, with queues
    at each end of the channels backing
    up.
    

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66. FOUR METAPHORS
    DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS METAPHORS
    These bottlenecks might render one
    or more nodes unresponsive,
    causing network partitions. Is the
    process that's taking too long to
    respond dead? We won't know
    unless we set a timeout…
    

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67. INTERMEZZO
    

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68. PACKAGING
    

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70. BUILDING GHC
    

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72. CONTAINERS
    ▸ Standard
    ▸ Ship Anywhere
    ▸ Train, Ships, Trucks
    ▸ Stackable
    ▸ Reusable
    

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74. MICROSERVICES
    

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75. MICROSERVICES
    ▸ Decentralised Governance
    ▸ Monolith vs. Microservice
    ▸ Isolation
    ▸ Collaboration
    ▸ Small is better - Big is cumbersome
    ▸ David vs. Goliath
    

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76. BRING POWER BACK TO THE
    DEVELOPER AND THE DEVELOPER
    WILL MAKE YOU A KING
    

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77. ERLANG ANYONE?
    

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78. “IN ANOTHER DIRECTION, ONE COULD ARGUE
    THAT MICROSERVICES ARE THE SAME THING
    AS THE ERLANG PROGRAMMING MODEL, BUT
    APPLIED TO AN ENTERPRISE APPLICATION
    CONTEXT”
    

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79. WHAT’S ERLANG’S
    ELEVATOR PITCH?
    

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80. MASTER THE ART OF
    METAPHOR SELECTION
    

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81. FIRST GET PEOPLE TO
    UNDERSTAND THINGS
    

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82. THEN EXPLAIN HOW
    THINGS ACTUALLY WORK
    

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83. RABBITMQ
    A JOB SERVER?
    

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84. MASTER THE ART OF
    MEANING AMPLIFICATION
    

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85. OUR PROGRAM IS THE
    METAPHOR FOR THE
    SOLUTION WE FOUND
    

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86. REFERENCES
    ▸ Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. “Metaphors We Live By”
    ▸ Gleick, James. “The Information: A History, a Theory, a
    Flood”
    ▸ Geary, James. “I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor
    and How It Shapes the Way We See the World”
    ▸ Demers, Alan, Dan Greene, Carl Hauser, Wes Irish, and John
    Larson. “Epidemic Algorithms for Replicated Database
    Maintenance”
    

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87. CREDITS - CC BY-NC-ND
    ▸ Office Workers: https://flic.kr/p/5WwpeV
    ▸ Sun: https://flic.kr/p/9Q6SY1
    ▸ Queue: https://flic.kr/p/8AqWW7
    ▸ Consensus: https://flic.kr/p/aws7dH
    ▸ Bottlenecks: https://flic.kr/p/EJ5Q3
    ▸ Gossip: https://flic.kr/p/4bCDr2
    ▸ Containers: https://flic.kr/p/nWLQxE
    

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88. @old_sound
    THANK YOU!
    

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