Thomas Otter

Lego is used a lot as a metaphor in the software industry, and I’m not sure that it is a particularly good metaphor. I my distant past I blogged about this here.

I came across the story of James May’s Lego house this evening. James May is one of the fellows on Top Gear, and he is having some success in branching out.

As the Inqusitr notes.

Top Gear presenter James May is giving away a free two-storey house. The only drawbacks is that the house it made out of Lego and you have to pick it up by Tuesday.

James May and 1,000 helpers has just built the world’s first full-size Lego house using 3,3 million Lego bricks. It even comes with a shower, working toilet, toaster, kitchen utensils and a bed.

The 20-ft tall house is built in Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking, Surrey, UK, but now the vineyard needs the land back to harvest its grapes. If the house isn’t removed by Tuesday at 8.00 AM, it will be hacked into bits with chainsaws.

According to James May, Legoland UK was supposed to take it to the theme park in Berkshire, but its too expensive to move. Legoland has critized James May, because he hasn’t consulted their model-makers on, how to built a moveable house.

Lego has donated the bricks to James May, so the house or bricks cannot be sold or used as a public attraction, but only given away for charity.

photo via the cc flickr of TchmilFan thanks!!

Now, totally ignoring my own advice above about Lego metaphors, this has a parallel in enterprise software, and that chestnut, SOA. SOA isn’t just about the building blocks, it is about how you actually put them together. Even flexible materials fail if they used incorrectly. Modular can become monolith, and then you need chainsaws…..

1 Comment »

Category: software design software industry     Tags: James May, Lego, SOA; software design

Share