
Metaphors in Man Pages - todsacerdoti
https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/05/08/metaphors-in-man-pages/
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the_af
I think the author is overreaching, or rather, this is how natural language
works for all fields of discourse (um, "fields", am I using a geography
metaphor?)

The author mentions a talk by Maggie Appleton (which I've not heard, so maybe
she's being misrepresented [1]) where she asks "Aren’t metaphors just a
frivolous distraction?". But it becomes impossible to talk about anything,
software included, without using them. To the point where I question whether
it's useful at all to think of them as metaphors.

How else talk about what a string or a file contains without using the word
"contains"? Is "she had no more ideas" clearer than "she ran out of ideas"?
(And wouldn't the former be a metaphor of possession, as if one could "have"
ideas? Maybe it's better to say "she was idea-less"?)

How would you say "he reused this variable name" without a metaphor of
resources? "He chose a variable name that was also the name of another
variable"?

\----

[1] edit: I've now watched Maggie's talk, and her point is that metaphors are
useful and indeed inescapable.

~~~
bobbiechen
This reminds me of the book Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark
Johnson
([https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo363799...](https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3637992.html)).
Edit: of course it's mentioned in both the article and the talk, no wonder
it's so relevant :)

It discusses how metaphors in language fundamentally shape how we think and
behave, even when we aren't aware of them. For example, in the second chapter
they write about the concept "Time is money":

== (this is a quote, including the italics for emphasis)

 _TIME IS MONEY_

You're _wasting_ my time.

This gadget will _save_ you hours.

I don't _have_ the time to _give_ you.

How do you _spend_ your time these days?

That flat tire _cost_ me an hour.

[...more examples omitted here for brevity]

Time in our culture is a valuable commodity. It is a limited resource that we
use to accomplish our goals. Because of the way that the concept of work has
developed in modern Western culture, where work is typically associated with
the time it takes and time is precisely quantified, it has become customary to
pay people by the hour, week, or year. In our culture _TIME IS MONEY_ in many
ways: telephone message units, hourly wages, hotel room rates, yearly budgets,
interest on loans, and paying your debt to society by "serving time." These
practices are relatively new in the history of the human race, and by no means
do they exist in all cultures.

== (end quote)

Reading that passage, especially the last line, _by no means do they exist in
all cultures_ , really hit me. I never really realized how common these
time=money metaphors really are, and I literally can't imagine a world where
time is not money myself - the metaphor is that internalized.

~~~
the_af
Very interesting! Both Julia (the article's author) and Maggie (the person she
quotes) mention this book, _Metaphors We Live By_.

I've now heard Maggie's talk and she seems reasonable. It's only the article's
author that seems to be stretching it too far...

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gorpomon
I really appreciate NDPI (Not Deep Programming Insights) like these. As
programmers we seem to continually seek Grand Unified Theories in the hopes of
simplifying our life or ascending to a new level of existence. It's nice to
file information away for use later that doesn't have broader implications.
Next time I work on a small, single use tool I'll definitely refer back to
this and consider what metaphor works best for my documentation.

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centimeter
Calling a lot of these "metaphors" is really stretching it - many of them are
just homonyms with some distant shared etymology that may or may not have been
metaphorical like 500 years ago.

~~~
smogcutter
Fwiw the word you’re looking for is synonym. Homonyms have the same
pronunciation but different meanings.

~~~
mrob
Homonyms is correct. "Dies" applied to a process means something completely
different from "dies" applied to a person. They're two different words with
the same pronunciation.

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amp108
I've always grappled with why you call something a "metaphor" if you have no
other word to call it. It always seemed to me that metaphor was something you
used instead of the common term for something, for poetic or rhetorical
effect; if there is no common term, why does a homonym become a metaphor? For
example, what is the non-metaphorical term for the legs of a chair?

~~~
gen220
It is a metaphor in the literal meaning of the word metaphor (i.e. it's a word
that "carries many" meanings).

To me, _prose_ is a metaphor if it deliberately plays with the double-meaning,
or uses it as an analogy to explain an example.

"I killed the process" isn't a metaphor to me.

"I killed the process, but its life wasn't too exciting anyway, it was just a
spin-lock" would be a metaphor.

"The server's dropping packets": no metaphor.

"The server's dropping packets, and it's made a mess all over the client's
carpeting.": metaphor, kinda pushing the utility, though.

If you go with the single-word definition, and care at all for etymology,
almost everything is a metaphor. It's kind of fun to go on those adventures.
Most of the words we use to describe cognition are metaphors for physical
activities. "Understand", "Comprehend", "Grasp".

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gnulinux
I don't understand how "backend" is a metaphor for orientation like "up",
"back", "forward". It's a term that etymologically comes from "back" but has
no semantic connection to the word.

~~~
JadeNB
Surely it's a very literal semantic connection? The backend is in back of (in
the sense of behind, from the user's point of view) the frontend ….

~~~
maxander
That’s still a metaphor; how processes actually occupy space isn’t relevant to
the distinction. If the backend is running on a laptop right in front of you,
it’s still a backend. The frontend is probably on the same machine, nether in
front of or behind the backend “really.” But we see the frontend’s display,
just like we see things that are in front of other things (and not things that
are behind other things,) thus the metaphor.

~~~
JadeNB
I agree that it is a metaphor. I meant to reply to the claim that there was no
semantic connection, but I agree that I chose wording that unfortunately
seemed to contrast literal truth with metaphorical truth.

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kortex
Woah. There's something deep about the way we describe ideas/ingenuity.

> ideas as cutting instruments: “that’s an incisive idea”, “that cuts right to
> the heart of the matter”, “he’s sharp“

Ideas as fire: bright idea, that's lit, spark of inspiration, burning passion.

Sharp rock. Fire. Earliest inventions.

Also, data is food (early connection to resources):

The algo _barfs_ on ill-formatted csvs. The database is _full_.

Arguably, _pipes_ \- mode of conveyance of water, sustainer of life.

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rchase
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

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Jenz
> “semiotics has become quite chic“

Hehe, does anyone know some good resources for semiotics self study?

~~~
whitten
I've been told that C.S. Pierce wrote some interesting stuff. A lot of the
theory behind the semantic web is also relevant.

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petepete
Light orange links on white aren't easy to read.

~~~
VWWHFSfQ
looks pretty good to me

~~~
petepete
Contrast ratio of 3.06:1, fails WCAG. I'd call that pretty dire.

~~~
VWWHFSfQ
it's pretty easy for me to read

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
And the code works on my machine, but the deploy still failed.

~~~
VWWHFSfQ
what do you mean

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Sibling comment explained my point correctly, but in the interest of fleshing
out my comment more nicely:

There is a meme in software development, of a developer who writes code, tests
locally, and pushes, only to be told that the code fails for other devs, or on
CI deployment to a testing environment, or whatever, and responding "well it
works on my machine". Depending on the case and how charitable you're feeling,
the dev in question can mean that as anything from "how strange that it worked
here and not there; let me start debugging", to "well it worked for me so your
system must be the problem".

My analogy was that you are a single person who appears to be claiming that
the text style in question is totally fine because on your screen and with
your eyes and brain, the text is readable. And this is not without value, but
it comes across as a bit tone-deaf when others pipe up and say that it isn't
readable to them, and even offer an objective standard by which the claim
could be assesed, and you simply _repeat_ that it works for you. Like... we
believe that you don't see a problem, but clearly other people do, and they've
even offered a way to remove the subjective human evaluation and you still
don't seem to believe that they might have a point.

