Not something specifically about software, but a tale that gets to the heart of what we do.
Which fictional story (book, movie, etc.) is the best allegory for software development?
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Top comments (60)
Based purely on title, then Neverending Story. Plus, many days feel like this - whether you're the horse or the person trying to pull the horse out of the bog...
Was going to be my suggestion as well 😂.
Well, if you accept some of the inanities of interacting with project managers and product owners as things that fall into this category, I've got one for ya:
Catch-22.
Book, 1970 movie adaptation or the recent Amazon Streaming adaptation? All three are absurd, but the 1970s adaptation is less grim than either the book or the Amazon version.
Ouch. That's a great question actually. I'm not sure if I'd call the recent Amazon adaptation necessarily grim, but it was definitely weighty especially towards the end.
But great question because I was having this exact debate with a coworker, I honestly don't know which adaptation I love more, they've both got a certain brilliance about them.
To me, the 1970 movie was too short to adequately make the transition from "merely absurd" to "grim". You don't have quite have that "litany of absurdities" feeling (especially if you binge the series) from the movie that you do in the streaming version.
For me, right now, it's Avatar: The Last Airbender (the full cartoon).
Searching for that first job, and knowing how much more I still have to learn in my coding career, definitely feels like Aang preparing (but never being prepared enough) to fight the Fire Lord.
Also, allegories about resourcefulness, relying on your community, coming up with novel solutions, drawing from wisdom of your predecessors, etc. etc. etc. (And maybe office dogs are Appa?)
:)
When code stops working... the cabbage guy.
my codebageeees =P
For us poor sods who don't work at cushy startups with foosball tables and free lunch, Office Space is still dead on. (Despite the movie being about software developers, I'm claiming it's not "specifically about software" as much as it's about the culture around office life in America.)
Or Dilbert...
Replace "Cloud" with AI/ML/DL/Blockchain and you have the modern business people.
Even better: modern business people that don't quite understand that "correlation" and "causation" are two very different things ...and that, while AI and ML can be damned good at finding the former, they sorely struggle with the latter.
Spoiler alert:
For foofy startups, Office Space is still dead on.
I've spent most of my career in consulting. I've gotten to work at a lot of organizations of varying sizes and across many industries. Every place is broken – you just have to find th brokenness that's easiest to deal with (one of the benefits of shorter-term consulting is you only have to tolerate a given brand of brokenness for a limited period of time and, when you're just about to lose your mind with the current brand, you can console yourself with "it's only more days/weeks/months"
Mike Judge is a national treasure
This is cheating, but "How to Fight a Hydra" by Josh Kaufman was written explicitly to be an allegory that is meant to describe "how to do hard things" (of which writing software definitely applies!)
It's meant to mimic the feel of a story from really old works (like the Odyssey, etc) but is significantly shorter, and much more to the point. I highly recommend it!
It's okay. I just listened to it on Audible a week or two ago. I expected to get a bit more out of it, but it's an interesting and quick read.
This is a book where I also think the audio book experience is probably different than the "in hand" reading experience as well. The way the book is laid out and split up adds to the experience I think, so that may be why it was an underwhelming audio book :)
Not a book or movie, but this Game:
Building upon the same thing over and over till it collapses.
What game is this?
Tummple amazon.com/BAXBO-Tummple-Original-...
The Myth of Sisyphus
I mean, that's what I was going to say. It probably applies to almost all jobs too. 🤣
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig. It talks about the nature of "Quality", the beauty of craft, and the relationship between people and technology.
It's covered more in this context in the Greater than Code podcast episode: 123: BOOK CLUB! Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Russian Doll could also be a good one.
Evangelion!!
There's some giant monsters comming to destroy everthing that we have, we don't know from where they came, but knows that we must fight them with everything we have (which are MECHAS).
It's just a movie about some monsters fighting kids with poor mental health caused of overhelming work strees using MECHAS.