babbling blue

I’ve seen plenty of stupid and self-serving analogies in my *mumble mumble* years on this earth. . . and I won’t say this one takes the cake, but it at least gets a cookie.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in an address to a law school gathering, compared lawyers to firefighters.

Roberts referred to the work of the late author Norman Maclean, who grew up in Missoula [where he was speaking] and whose book “Young Men and Fire” chronicled the role of firefighters in Montana’s deadly Mann Gulch Fire of 1949. Like Maclean, lawyers and judges must sift through mountains of information to find the evidence that really matters, he said.

Roberts noted that both firefighters and lawyers are viewed as “a little bit nuts” and have a strong sense of camaraderie.

I wish there were more direct quotes in the article. I’m curious how far he took that preposterous analogy.

This has inspired me to come up with one of my own!

Software developers are like soldiers. We both often find ourselves in unfamiliar and difficult situations (working with other people’s code) and can accomplish the most when we work in teams. It’s important to coordinate in teams though, as friendly fire is always a danger (”Oh no you changed your function, now my module doesn’t work!”). We can both find ourselves in high pressure situations (”OMG showstopper!”) and never know when something could blow up in our faces.

Pretty good, eh?