[HN Gopher] Christopher Alexander has died
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Christopher Alexander has died
Author : voisin
Score : 159 points
Date : 2022-03-18 20:24 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnu.org)
| leobg wrote:
| What a sad day. Never met him personally. But from what I heard
| this man's influence has reached from architecture all the way to
| Wikipedia and Tesla. Unthinkable how different our world today
| would be if it hadn't been for his work. May he rest in peace.
| And may his ideas continue to live, and mingle, and add color to
| our world.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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
| fsloth wrote:
| IMO Alexander's design pattern concept is intelligently
| superior to the terms trivialization in the atrociously
| highly rated GoF book. GoF enumerates the tedious patches one
| needs to use on cumbersome languages like Java or C++ due to
| the languages primitive nature. The main advantage of GoF
| that now when you say "Factory pattern" everyone knows sort
| of concept they are speaking of.
|
| However.
|
| In the scope of Alexander's work GoF patterns are of equal
| complexity, as if giving names to typical architectural items
| like "door" or "room".
|
| Alexander's work is on a higher level - discussing how to
| perceive the complex totality the combination and co-
| existence of such design features create. GoF book names door
| a door. Alexander's book discusses how to design houses and
| communities. Completely different scale.
|
| In software engineering terms I think the closest book that
| is the best analogue to The Timeless Way of Building in terms
| of discussing higher level patterns, and how to combine them,
| is perhaps the classical Structure and Interpretation of
| Computer programs that since it uses such an elegant
| language, it can skip the tedium and start with expressing of
| higher level patterns, and in the end how to combine them
| into a whole complex system.
| getpost wrote:
| Before APL, There was _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ in
| 1964.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form
| fsloth wrote:
| That book is fantastic! It's absolutely thrilling design
| joyride through the most surprising of concepts - and yet
| it manages to send a very concrete message to designers of
| all disciplines who are required to build something novel
| that needs to meet real world requirements.
|
| Minsky, vernacular architecture, graphs, old houses, how to
| design complex systems...
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| 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.
| flancian wrote:
| I agree it's a great place to start; it is much shorter,
| and contains stronger (or more obvious anyway) links with
| mathematics, graph theory.
|
| We did a Christopher Alexander reading club some months
| ago and took some notes as a group using hypothes.is, it
| worked very nicely and anyone interested is welcome to
| join in:
|
| https://anagora.org/go/notes-on-the-synthesis-of-
| form/hypoth...
| rwmj wrote:
| He turns up in Stewart Brand's excellent TV programme _How
| Buildings Learn_ , which is also on Youtube:
| https://www.youtube.com/user/brandst
| jabl wrote:
| Truly an excellent and thought provoking series.
| threefour wrote:
| The most influential person in architecture and software whose
| influence is difficult to point to.
| drewda wrote:
| Looks like the CNU web server is overwhelmed. I was able to read
| this at
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220318203326/https://www.cnu.o...
| wnesensohn wrote:
| 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.
| toyg wrote:
| _> the design patterns movement which, I don 't know when, must
| have taken a series of wrong turns_
|
| Such is always the case, as soon as anything becomes a "school
| of thought". From Christianity to patterns and agile, someone
| will evangelise a set of concepts that s/he strongly believes
| in, and they will be reinterpreted or exploited by others for
| their own purposes. For design patterns, it was the whole
| "Enterprise Java" sector who went overboard and became
| doctrinaire.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > 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 city.
|
| Sprawl is a problem, but sprawl is a new world problem that has
| to do with its _very_ short history.
|
| We've got about 500 years of old world folk moving to the new
| world, but the old world has thousands of years of history.
| Besides new world cities starting from much lower population
| density overall than the old world already had four to five
| centuries ago, there's also the fact that the last 100+ years of
| that history has had personal motor vehicles in it -- that's
| 1/4th to 1/5th of all the Americas' post-Columbus era, while it's
| more like less than 1/20th of the old world's history.
|
| You can critique things like this all you like, but trying to do
| away with the "dendritism" that arises naturally is... unnatural,
| and requires a great deal of market distortion or use of force.
| Is that really something we want?
|
| EDIT: Yeah, I probably read too much into that sentence!
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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.
| cryptonector wrote:
| That's fair.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > We've got about 500 years of old world folk moving to the new
| world, but the old world has thousands of years of history.
| Besides new world cities starting from much lower population
| density overall than the old world already had four to five
| centuries ago
|
| Humans have lived in "the new world" for at least 24,000 years.
| At the period when the first Spanish arrived in "the new
| world", it seems likely that there were cities here at least as
| large as anything in "the old world". By some calculations,
| "the new world" may have been home for between 10% and 33% of
| total human population worldwide.
|
| What changed the development path in "the new world" was the
| arrival of "old worse" disease, which wiped out at least 80% of
| the human population here (perhaps 10% of humanity), and then a
| frankly genocidal process by European settlers built around
| ideas such as manifest destiny that intentionally completely
| ignored the millenia-old histories of human civilization here.
|
| It is convenient to reset the clock in 1492 (or even 1776), but
| it is not honest.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > On the other hand, all dense old-world cities (London, Paris,
| Rome, even Tokyo, say) are... "dendritic".
|
| Not in the sense of the Alexander essay. It explicitly
| contrasts the interwoven connections of traditional cities with
| the artificial tree-like structure of modern planned cities.
|
| "Tree", in the sense that Alexander uses it in that essay, is a
| math tree (e.g., a binary tree in CS), not an organic tree.
|
| I highly recommend reading the essay for those who haven't seen
| it.
| stellar678 wrote:
| Sprawl patterns are not caused by natural market forces.
|
| They are caused and enabled by land-use zoning that uses state
| force to limit the use of private property, along with massive
| market distortions like government-funded freeways and the
| building of low-density infrastructure without a sustainable
| mechanism to pay for maintenance and operation of that
| infrastructure.
|
| But I'm also not a free-market absolutist and I'm not sure I
| believe there has ever been an unencumbered free market.
| Markets are just a mechanism to organize and manage a complex
| system. There are always forces in place which nudge the
| overall behavior in one way or another while still leaving the
| market interactions to hash out the details. That's fine - we
| just need to nudge things is the "right" direction.
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| Don't forget that the market _was_ heavily distorted in favor
| of sprawl.
|
| Massive federal investments (subsidies) in:
|
| * interstates and highways that made sprawl development
| possible.
|
| * oil infrastructure and automobiles.
|
| * suburban housing development designed to specifically exclude
| people of color, driving disinvestment from and leading to the
| collapse of cities.
|
| None of these are natural new-world problems nor are they
| market driven, these are policy choices made. Pre vs Post WWII
| cities are structured and shaped completely differently as a
| result of these policies.
| [deleted]
| onetime865 wrote:
| Probably the biggest influence of my engineering career. RIP.
| exolymph wrote:
| 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.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Agreed - it is a great bathroom or subway book, because you can
| pop into it randomly for 4 minutes and read a section, and then
| go on with your day.
| Bud wrote:
| I treasure my copies of all of Alexander's books, but most
| especially A Pattern Language. It's beautifully printed and
| bound and it's a joy to come back to again and again. I'm not
| an architect or urban planner; it's just that the ideas are so
| compelling and beautiful.
| Bieberfan2003 wrote:
| Thankfully, this PDF is nowhere near complete. Check it out
| from your local library.
| habith wrote:
| Why thankfully? What if you cannot access your local library
| for a myriad of reasons?
| a9h74j wrote:
| I don't remember which volume it was from, but doing any
| general maintenance I always remember this suggestion of his:
|
| _Work on the most neglected area first_ -- e.g., work on the
| most neglected outdoor area of a property first.
|
| I don't recall his specific reasoning, but in my mind the
| essence was: _Otherwise you will be acting on displacement
| anxiety_ and _When an eyesore is taken care of first, your
| perspective on potential other improvements will change._
|
| RIP
| gjvc wrote:
| This is the most efficient way (IMHO) to raise the _average_
| quality of an installation / system, not to strive for a 1%
| improvement in the top end (while expending 10x the effort in
| doing so for said 1%, rather than the inverse).
|
| This is one of those rare delights; an approach which is as
| powerful as it is simple.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Huge loss. His thoughts on the "habitability" of software are
| priceless.
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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]
| lcuff wrote:
| I wonder how many software engineers, and how many of the GoF
| (Gang of Four) who wrote the software book that popularized
| patterns in the software world, actually read and thought about A
| Pattern Language. I'm sure some, but in my mind the subtitle
| "Towns, Buildings, Construction" examines patterns that are large
| in scope, medium in scope, and small in scope. One of my personal
| complaints about software patterns is that there are so few that
| are 'large scale'.
| lukasb wrote:
| 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 want to work in any other way."
|
| YMMW on the practicality of his advice, but it was super
| inspiring.
| sloan wrote:
| Thanks for the anecdote, I love it. What's SWE in this context?
| Nadya wrote:
| Software Engineer.
| fifticon wrote:
| Software Engineer I think
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| 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.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| 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.
| kbelder wrote:
| Yes! If you can get somebody on your team that has worked
| their way up from, for example, a customer service contact
| center, they'll be immensely valuable. Just their insight
| on what customers love and hate about your product is
| probably worth their hire.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I think it's a long term obvious win. If you care larger, you
| avoid painting yourself in corners. See what really needs to
| be done, do just that and enjoy the harmony.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 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.
| xLaszlo wrote:
| This video of him from 1996 is amazing with hindsight. A must
| watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98LdFA-_zfA
|
| RIP Christopher Alexander
| pmoriarty wrote:
| 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.
| gjvc wrote:
| OOPSLA talks of that era were fantastic. Alan Kay has often
| paid tribute to Christopher Alexander in his talks and I cannot
| resist mentioning this from Alan from the following year
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY
| nabla9 wrote:
| I suggest that anyone interested in his work reads part I of "The
| Patterns of Software" by Richard Gabriel.
| https://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/PatternsOfSoftware.pdf
|
| In my opinion, Gabriel has a better and deeper understanding of
| Christopher Alexander's pattern language and how it can be
| applied to software than the whole Software Pattern movement
| which created a very different interpretation of patterns.
| shoo wrote:
| > There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life
| and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This
| quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. [...]
| It is not only simpler beauty of form and color. Man can make
| that without making nature. It is not only fitness to purpose.
| Man can make that too, without making nature. And it is not only
| the spiritual quality of beautiful music or of a quiet mosque,
| that comes from faith. Man can make that too, without making
| nature.
|
| > The quality which has no name includes these simpler sweeter
| qualities. But it is so ordinary as well, that it somehow reminds
| us of the passing of our life.
|
| > It is a slightly bitter quality.
|
| - Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building
| nemo1618 wrote:
| Sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware
|
| > The awareness of impermanence, or transience of things, and
| both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their
| passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this
| state being the reality of life.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| 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 "wholeness." He
| identified 15 elements of wholeness in designs that might be
| measured, like the presence of coherent centers, strong
| boundaries, local symmetries or roughness/imperfection. He
| proposes that "the harmony that is sought in these computations
| is indeed what we otherwise call 'beauty'. But the result of
| harmony-seeking computations are not merely pretty or artistic.
| In most cases, they are also better functionally and
| technically."
|
| Alexander, Christopher "Harmony-Seeking Computations."
| _International Journal of Unconventional Computing_ 4 (2008).
| Bieberfan2003 wrote:
| 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.
| Isomorpheus wrote:
| Fascinating. Saw a paper pop up on one of my Semantic Scholar
| feeds just the other day with the title "Symmetry and
| simplicity spontaneously emerge from the algorithmic nature of
| evolution". Here's the link
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.454038v2
| mezod wrote:
| Wow :( Precisely yesterday I was reading some reviews on some of
| his books on architecture... does anyone care to recommend one?
| mercutio2 wrote:
| A Pattern Language is incredibly good.
|
| His core ideas have been riffed on so much since then that it
| won't read as an original idea anymore, but it's still a great
| read if you're interested in thinking about how communities and
| building and people work.
| sloan wrote:
| The Timeless Way of Building is great
| rongenre wrote:
| I took a class in cognitive psych decades ago, and one of the
| highlights was going over 'A Pattern Language' and 'A Timeless
| way of Building'.
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