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Metaphors are also ways of communicating ideas. A good metaphor is as simple or as complicated as it needs to be in illustrating a new concept

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Problems arise as soon as you (ab)use a metaphor (used to explain a higher level/adjacent problem) to explain concepts it was never meant to model.

Example: Array of items as a shopping cart: how do you efficiently remove an item from the array (as you can from a shopping cart)?

There's always a possibility that a bad metaphor can be made, but this doesn't mean that metaphors themselves are bad. They require at least some consideration in order to communicate and relate the relevant details of something to another thing. It would be like criticizing multiplication because sometimes people forget to carry extra values

metaphors are like, herding .. fine old .. elephants .. in the air

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