Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Christopher Alexander has died

cnu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 139 posts

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#41

Post by wolverine876 »

lukasb wrote: post #5

Saw him speak at Berkeley around the time his book on the Eshin project was released. Talked in very strong terms about the importance of working in a holistic, caring way. A SWE in the audience spoke up, saying basically "look, we want to follow that approach, but it's hard, we have a lot of stakeholders to satisfy in order for a project to happen." Alexander was unyielding. "Once you've worked with love, you won't…

Without knowing Alexander's concept in detail, once I learned to work (and live) that way, doing otherwise has seemed like a waste of time, almost pointless. The only point is that, unfortunately, many people don't understand - and scoff at - working 'with love', but in those cases I often feel like I'm mostly building a road to nowhere.

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#42

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

getpost wrote: post #17
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was where the concept of Design Patterns came from. In the early days of Design Patterns (GoF, et al ), he was often quoted. I purchased a couple of his books: A Pattern Language [0], and The Timeless Way of Building [1]. These books were very readable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Timeless_Way_of_Building

Before APL, There was Notes on the Synthesis of Form in 1964. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form

Most people know "A Pattern Language" because of the design patterns, but it's _this_ book that every software engineer (and everyone in the space of designing solutions) should read.

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#43

Post by wnesensohn »

I'm glad I stumbled upon his books when researching design patterns early on in my career. His writing in 'The Timeless Way of Building' left a big impression on me, precisely because it didn't reduce building to a sequence of mechanical steps which are to be followed exactly, but allowed, even called for, gaining a deeper understanding for quality. It's hard to express, but he did a stellar job at it.

It's somewhat ironic that he is said to have laid the foundations of the design patterns movement which, I don't know when, must have taken a series of wrong turns to end up where it did.

Thank you Mr. Alexander for writing about these fuzzy things which dare to be named.

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#44

Post by [deleted] »

karaterobot wrote: post #28

I just buy a new copy of A Pattern Language whenever I see it in a bookstore, because I know I'm going to end up giving it to someone. It's one of those books you can confidently recommend to any curious, intelligent person, and it may change their thinking, or at least blow their mind, whether they find it useful or not. He was such an original thinker.

[deleted]

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#46

Post by pmoriarty »

xLaszlo wrote: post #6

This video of him from 1996 is amazing with hindsight. A must watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98LdFA-_zfA RIP Christopher Alexander

This is very interesting, but his main concerns (the creation of what he calls "living structures", "nurturing structures", and things that make people "feel whole") seem to be completely and utterly divorced from what people in the computer field are interested in.

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#47

Post by skeeter2020 »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #37
lukasb wrote: post #5

Saw him speak at Berkeley around the time his book on the Eshin project was released. Talked in very strong terms about the importance of working in a holistic, caring way. A SWE in the audience spoke up, saying basically "look, we want to follow that approach, but it's hard, we have a lot of stakeholders to satisfy in order for a project to happen." Alexander was unyielding. "Once you've worked with love, you won't…

I wouldn't call it love per se , but it certainly does take a special kind of empathy to put yourself in the shoes of someone using your software, and to use that perspective to make a great product.

I have several junior developers on my team who came from the customer success / support side of the business who grew themselves into developer roles. They typically have not only the strongest desire to learn & improve, but also the most empathy and understanding of our impact on customers & their livelihood.

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#48

Post by habith »

Bieberfan2003 wrote: post #31
exolymph wrote: post #3

Massive PDF of A Pattern Language: https://arl.human.cornell.edu/linked%20docs/Alexander_A_Patt... But I recommend owning and reading it in print. Great book to dip in and out of at whim.

Thankfully, this PDF is nowhere near complete. Check it out from your local library.

Why thankfully? What if you cannot access your local library for a myriad of reasons?

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#49

Post by cryptonector »

nabla9 wrote: post #21
cryptonector wrote: post #13

> In 1965, Alexander wrote a much-cited essay, A City Is Not a Tree, one of the earliest and most trenchant critiques of the dendritic, sprawl pattern of city planning and development. On the other hand, all dense old-world cities (London, Paris, Rome, even Tokyo, say) are... "dendritic". There's nothing wrong with that, and it has everything to do with the history of the ownership of all the bits of property on the…

The sentence you quote does not give you enough information to make any kind of critique. It's OK to use the sentence as a writing prompt to write what toughs it brings into your mind, but that has little to do with the subject. Alexander's critique is against rigid tree structure when a city should have connections between branches.

That's fair.

Re: Christopher Alexander has died

#50

Post by Bieberfan2003 »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #19

He had really interesting computational ideas about harmony. From The Nature of Order (2002) “As architects, builders, and artists, we are called upon constantly—every moment of the working day—to make judgments about relative harmony. We are constantly trying to make decisions about what is better and what is worse…” Following this, he published a paper on “harmony-seeking computation” as an approach to optimize “wh…

Meh. The whole "wholeness" and "structure-preserving transformations" thing just sounded to me like he was describing a literal cell division algorithm. He even gave cell division as an example of structured behavior rules producing wholeness out of chaos.
Post reply on HN