The function and effects of programming are different than conversation, so the common "I think the code is trying to tell us something" is literally incorrect (but in an interesting way). `Coding Is Conversing With the Computer` isn't a particularly *harmful* Conceptual Metaphor𓇯, though I would choose a different one.
content
I believe in some version of Associationist Theories of Thought𓇯. That's applied to conversation at Theory of Conversation. That theory is extended to writing prose in Theory of Prose.
The short version is that we have "networks" in the brain that have been trained to recognize when what we're saying is likely to be causing confusion/misunderstanding/whatever in our interlocutor. These have been co-opted and modified for use in writing, in that way evolution has of saying "Hey this old thing kinda fits this new context: I'll kludge up some way of using it."
In just the same way, programmer brains have learned to recognize that a coding session is proceeding along a statistically-likely-to-be-troublesome path. They have networks for that.
It is, I think, those coding-is-going-wrong networks that are engaged while coding, not the this-conversation-is-going-wrong networks. When they are predicting a bad future based on bad pasts, we say "the code is trying to tell us something."
That's attributing a good observation made by one set of networks to other, older networks.
feelings
In my case, my problem detectors alert me not through anything as useful as thoughts about what's going wrong, but via a gradually increasing feeling of unease: a feeling that the code is *pushing back*. The Mangle of Practice»
I prefer that metaphor to the one that refers to code as a conversational partner because it shifts the focus from something intellectual (what the code is saying) to how the code is making you *feel*. (I know some people already use the "pushing back" metaphor.)
As I think programmers (very much including me) are more oriented toward the interpretation of symbols than toward attending to feelings, a new metaphor can't hurt.