Communicating with Metaphors, page 14

Hyperbole, continued

There is probably no slippery a set of concepts in the programming language world than that of a class and an object. Here are a couple of metaphors used to describe these notions from one of my recent books:

There are a number of metaphors used to say the same thing. A class is a blueprint, and the object is a building built from it. A class is a cookie cutter, and the object is the cookie. Yum!

The same book also provides a more rigorous and reductive definition of the terms. For example,

...an object is simply an aggregation of values

This may be a perfectly reasonable definition, and even accurate enough, but it provides nothing of feeling for what an object in software terms is, or how it relates to the concept of a class.

Click here to check out the Stretch Your Brain excercise.

Oxymorons and Paradoxes

An oxymoron is the use of two words with contradictory meanings together to convey a single meaning. Examples include :

• Military intelligence

• Young adult

• Sanitary landfill

• Legal ethics

• Corporate ethics

When you encounter an oxymoron as a reader, it’s quite possible that you won’t know the intent of the author. Did they realize they were using an oxymoron?

If not, the author has simply blundered (and, no, a moronic author is not an oxymoron).

If an oxymoron is intentional, then the author probably means to be witty in an ironic mode. If the words in the oxymoron are acknowledged as contradictory, then the two terms are being compared as in a metaphor. The ground is the contradiction.

Continued next page

TOC || Page 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20