101–110 of 139 posts
I had no idea Christopher Alexander was a software development luminary. I knew him via _A Pattern Language_, and I'm way more into architecture and physical space design than I am software. Now I'm mega interested to absorb his thoughts on software. I expect I'll be much better for it. He's on my "recommended reading" list, I had _no_ idea he was so enmeshed in software: https://josh.works/recommended-reading#a-patt…
Here you can find 12 of his "real world" works: https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/design-studio-portfolio...
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.
That book changed my life. We bought our house using those principles, and couldn't be happier or more comfortable.
I think it was hacker culture that really bouyed his ideas and kept them in the popular consciousness, and in turn, his ideas became really foundational to hacker culture as well. His passing is if not the loss of a pillar, it is at least a buttress.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Alexander advocated getting the people who would live or work in the buildings involved in the design and construction of the buildings. Get the people who will live in the place out in the field and work together to peg out the outlines of the buildings & refine the design. This philosophy is succinctly summarised in the book Peopleware: > local control of design by those who will occupy the space Unfortunately this…
Minecraft has some of these elements, and is why it is fun for people.
Arguably, Roblox is the largest scale example, though my understanding is that it is still not so easy that end users can really participate in creating their own designs.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I once had a high trust (love) team. We kicked ass. Together. I miss it every day. Everything since has tasted like ash. I've been trying to get back to that happy place ever since. Sadly, I eventually stopped talking about trust (in the workplace) IRL; people don't much like crazy talk or zealots.
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…
Is it this ? https://patterns.architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-173014