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The metaphors are not fully isomorphic analogies, but they can still be helpful. Framing programming ability as being a form of modern literacy, for instance, conveys more urgency to the public.

When they start actually programming, these metaphors will leave their mind and they'll focus on the concretes, or at least find better metaphors.

I think the only worry comes from basing long term policy decisions on crude metaphors.

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Exactly. People - we computer programmer magicians included - understand new things by relating them to other things that they already know. I expect there are readers (or viewers) of the BBC or The Guardian who only know that programmers do things with computers. That is the entire breadth of their knowledge of computer programming. These metaphors help them frame this new information in terms of things they already understand.

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