[mattdw]

I did have the thought that if OO is clearly metaphorical, it could be argued that all abstractions within the program are 'pataphysical. That is, we can say "an agent sends a message to another agent" or "the function passes control to the current continuation", and we're actually describing concrete reality in program-land, rather than metaphors for real-world objects.

In that sense, 'pataphysical programming might be more common than we realize.