Analogies carry a lot of meaning, often subtle and hard to get across in a paragraph, let alone a line.
Who else would you explain it? PHP cloud hosting?
Peoples understanding of a thing is not always very high res. Take 'evolution by natural selection'. Some people understand the mechanics, consequences and how A leads to B quite well, some don't. People assciate all sorts of things outside of the mechanics with it: 'aha moment,' 'prototypical scientific theory,' 'gradual process,' 'controversy,' 'cornerstone theory,' etc. etc.
You can get at this fuzzy nebulae of meanings and associations via analogies: "Darwin of climate science," "Natural Selection of Geology," "Intelligent Design of Feminism."
A lot of people don't know exactly what Heroku is, they know it's getting a lot of buzz, have heard the praise, have heard customers staunchly defending the prices, etc. They might be inclined to check out a Heroku (or for example, app engine) for their language.
Who else would you explain it? PHP cloud hosting?
Peoples understanding of a thing is not always very high res. Take 'evolution by natural selection'. Some people understand the mechanics, consequences and how A leads to B quite well, some don't. People assciate all sorts of things outside of the mechanics with it: 'aha moment,' 'prototypical scientific theory,' 'gradual process,' 'controversy,' 'cornerstone theory,' etc. etc.
You can get at this fuzzy nebulae of meanings and associations via analogies: "Darwin of climate science," "Natural Selection of Geology," "Intelligent Design of Feminism."
A lot of people don't know exactly what Heroku is, they know it's getting a lot of buzz, have heard the praise, have heard customers staunchly defending the prices, etc. They might be inclined to check out a Heroku (or for example, app engine) for their language.