A software container is a pretty abstract thing, so it might help if we start with an analogy that should be pretty familiar to most of you. The analogy is a shipping container in the transportation industry. Throughout history, people have been transporting goods from one location to another by various means. Before the invention of the wheel, goods would most probably have been transported in bags, baskets, or chests on the shoulders of the humans themselves, or they might have used animals such as donkeys, camels, or elephants to transport them.
With the invention of the wheel, transportation became a bit more efficient as humans built roads that they could move their carts along. Many more goods could be transported at a time. When the first steam-driven machines, and later gasoline-driven engines, were introduced...
