Great feedback re the risks of physical metaphors! I'd agree a bad one does more harm than good. Lakoff points out that our linguistic conceptions typically compose-- so you can talk about both IDEAS as BUILDINGS and as CONTAINERS because the former is a special case of the latter-- and we lose that quickly when mapping to programming. I'm not sure if that's inherent in how abstract these things are or if it just hasn't been attempted on a deep enough level. (Do other control structures fit into the railway paradigm? Is it generative?)
Enjoyed your post, lots to unpack in the 'cleanliness' analogy, will think on it.
Enjoyed your post, lots to unpack in the 'cleanliness' analogy, will think on it.