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We all know that metaphors are hopelessly hard to get right. Perhaps you have heard that awful one about how developing software is just like building houses?
;-)
Even so, a metaphor can often be useful when explaining something particular in a certain context.

I came up with another (non-perfect) metaphor today, new for me at least. It occurred to me today that where I live, our society here in Sweden is pretty similar to building software (and it's no doubt exactly the same in lots of places). We try to get rid of as many repetitive, uninteresting tasks as possible, and we do it by automation instead of adding head count. For example we want to have lawn mower robots, vacuum cleaner robots, self cleaning windows, and so on. What we are left with are interesting tasks that we WANT to do on our own and/or that are best done by us, such as playing with the kids, eating and socializing. Oh, and taking care of the robots so they know what to do.
:D