Ivan

Teaching an elephant to paint (OOPSLA 2005).

On the panel Structured Design and Modern Software Practices, Ed Yourdan told this joke (apropos someone using UML for user interface modelling - but he told it much better than I can):

Teaching an elephant to paint

An elephant trainer at a circus decided to teach his elephant to paint. After a while, he's taught it how to hold a paint brush. Later, he manages to teach the elephant how to dip the paint brush in the paint. Some time later still, he's managed to teach the elephant to stroke the brush against the canvas. Many years go by, and he teaches the elephant to paint better and better. Then one day, a reporter hears the story and comes to see the elephant paint. The elephant trainer says, "watch this"; he gets the reporter to sit on a stool and pose, and tells the elephant to paint a portrait of the reporter. The elephant paints deftly, with apparent confidence. After 20 minutes the reporter is excited to see the resulting portrait. The elephant trainer proudly turns the canvas around so the reporter can see it. It's just a mess of random colors. The reporter says "errr, it's crap". The elephant trainer is unperturbed. He beams with enthusiasm and pride "Maybe. But isn't it amazing - I've taught an elephant to paint!".

To coin a phrase

I'd like to coin the phrase "teaching an elephant to paint". In a meeting, if I say "yes, we could do that, but it would be teaching an elephant to paint" then I hope you'll know what I mean.