Yesterday evening Ruby on Rails came up while talking to my mom, and I decided to try to explain what a framework was. I wound up comparing a framework to a sonnet.
If you’re writing a poem, and you decide to write a sonnet, you have a lot of little things decided for you right away. You now know the length of the poem, and the general structure. You know how long each line will be, and you even have some criteria for the content (iambic pentameter and a certain rhyming scheme). Other than that, you can do whatever you want.
It’s by no means a direct analogy, but because my mom knows what a sonnet is, the concept of a framework made sense to her right away.
I may have overreached just a little to use sonnets as the example. Maybe frameworks are more like limericks. Same idea, though.
And maybe good frameworks are like Haiku? At least the ones that are easy to start and clearly define the scope…
There once was a framework named Rails…
http://twitter.com/d2h/statuses/799596062
@martin Well what do you know. That would explain the traffic spike.
Framework-based applications are like sonnets; frameworks themselves are like meters — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter_%28poetry%29
Still, good near-analogy!
I think you’ll find that sonnets are like frameworks ;) they are a framework for writing poetry. So are haikus. But still - good analogy.
Yes, a better analogy might have been that, say, frameworks are to programming in general as poetic forms (such as a sonnet or haiku) are to poetry in general. Maybe.
@ro; I know the analogy is a stretch, but keep in mind, I was talking to my mom, who neither knows about nor cares about the details which would make the analogy perfect. She was just curious what this “Ruby on Rails” was that I was using.
For what it is — a non-technical explanation of a framework — I still think the analogy works pretty well. As a perfect one-to-one analogy… no, of course not. ;-)
While I’m thinking about it, camping seems more like the haiku of frameworks…
EDIT: apologies to those whose comments only just appeared now. For some reason akismet wanted to call them spam…
Ok, time to geek this thread out:
japanese ruby
english php
meter framework
sonnet RoR
iambic pentameter PHPCake
haiku Ramaze
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_18 Highrise
BTW, anyone internet technology person who can explain any aspect of what they do to their mom *is* a genius :)
Ro, I’m with you, don’t disagree with your points at all.
Like I said, though, I just wasn’t aiming for that level direct analogy with the original comparison.