The world in which a software system lives is filled with meaning. The very act of development is an exercise in meaning — its discovery, its formulation, its communication. Domain-driven design makes this first class.

The abstract nature of software and its development leads to the extensive use of metaphors to confer meaning on the classes, functions, UI elements, relationships, patterns, etc., of our systems, as well as the mental models we hold about them and reason through.

But just because we are immersed in metaphor and meaning from an early age, and just because the daily work of software development employs metaphor and wrangles meaning, that doesn't mean we're necessarily good at it. Let's talk about the whats, whys and hows of metaphor, communication, naming and thinking.