Thinking about design, OO perferable. What metaphors and analogies do you use for your objects?

Question

Sorry, for the vaguely worded question but how do you think about your objects or functions?

Do you view them as a series of data structures?

Mathematical functions? Is is how pure functional programmers think?

Do you think about the lifecycle of an object?

For instance, an interesting analogy is to think of set of dependent objects of a biological entity, like a cell. The membrane is encapsulation. An imperfect analogy, but useful?

I want your opinions, specifically your metaphors and analogies.

Idle thoughts for a Friday.

Answer 1

Cars. You can't go wrong with a good car analogy.

Cars have wheels. Cars are vehicles. Sports cars are cars. And so on.

They're even built in factories!