Stop the software / car analogy

I can understand that making analogies is a very powerful form of explaining a hard concept, but you should be aware of the demons you might be unleashing. 

I like analogies, as much as anyone. I do the Einstein-Train-Thing to convince my self that I understand relativity like the next man. But everybody is careful talking about relativity and nobody would walk outside the framing without considering it very carefully.

Software on the other hand is not so respected, and I ask you: does the next man really get it?

Everybody can relate to cars, right? So that is a good reason to use the analogy, you would think, but here is where I have to disagree:

Thinking you know about the domain, sells, production lines, marketing, resourcing, electronics, hydraulics and all the engineering that has been put into the car is the first mistake. The second mistake is assuming other people do (unless they work for BMW or something like that). 

You think you are making the software concepts simpler, just by equaling them to something people can relate, but you (if you are a developer) understand the software as an engineer would understand a car (maybe not even all cars, just some models). So you see the way things have to be mapped for your analogy to hold, but by making others think they can too, there is very much harm done. 

People automatically will start solving problems in the car domain, not worrying of the other side of the equation. I see it all the time, they discuss for hours (true story) about the wheels, and colors and sport edition vs. luxury set-up implying there is some high cognitive back-port to the software domain that you originally were talking about. Concepts get all weird and people get very creative and try to illustrate their concepts talking about paper cars, or invisible cars that only exist for one ride (true story again). 

That is simply wrong. Try to elaborate your concepts without the use of analogies, unless you are absolutely positive that  you can defend your framing.

There are of course some examples that work but they work on the bad side of making analogies, i.e. making an obviously far-fetch connection, like: "you buy a car, and some little writing in the ignition says that by turning the key you agree to drive only to a Toyota authorized cinema". This would illustrate very good some software licensing agreements in real life. 

But generally speaking, there are more reasons why software is not like cars. Here are my top 5:

1. The user experience of software and cars is not the same. You don't drive software. A computer drives it for you.
2. While costs of developing might be similar in car and software domains, the cost of production of software if mostly 0.
3. People that reverse-engineer and understand a car, still can not make one.
4. You can't paint your software blue and sell it as blue-edition.
5. Try rebooting a crashed car.

Think about this the next time you try to explain your software.