[HN Gopher] Beautiful Software: Christopher Alexander's research...
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Beautiful Software: Christopher Alexander's research initiative on
computing
Author : herbertl
Score : 109 points
Date : 2022-12-16 06:53 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (beautiful.software)
(TXT) w3m dump (beautiful.software)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Is it possible to sympathize and agree with everything he says,
| and yet find the writing insufferably pompous? Because that's
| where I'm at with The Timeless Way of Building.
|
| I didn't get that in watching him:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98LdFA-_zfA
|
| I was picturing someone like Dan Akroyd on SNL as Leonard Pinth
| Garnell and "Bad Ballet."
| simonsarris wrote:
| I've recommended his book a lot but I also find the writing
| itself to be poor. He's very much trying to write like its some
| (specifically Taoist) mystic text but it comes off as quite
| cheesy.
| davidivadavid wrote:
| I don't disagree that this was a risky bet, and yet now I
| can't imagine the book being written any other way.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Oh, I can:
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1703957/
|
| Thomas Wolfe brought Maxwell Perkins a "book" of over 2,000
| pages, and he was still writing furiously. Perkins still
| said "we mean to publish this" and brought it down to a
| manageable length.
|
| Alexander just needs some tough love.
| lolinder wrote:
| I recently rewatched his address to OOPSLA[0] and it was funny to
| see him trying to avoid coming straight out and saying "you guys
| completely misunderstood the point of my work!" He tried to allow
| for the possibility that he was just misunderstanding, but it was
| pretty obvious that he knew that the Gang of Four style patterns
| movement took the surface level organization from his work and
| completely ignored the moral and ethical _point_ of it all.
|
| Glad to see he didn't leave off with that! We could do with more
| software people studying his _actual_ work, which was building
| humane, living spaces that make people whole.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98LdFA-_zfA
| mindcrime wrote:
| _We could do with more software people studying his actual
| work, which was building humane, living spaces that make people
| whole._
|
| It's funny, I just ordered copies of _The Timeless Way of
| Building_ , _A Pattern Language_ and _Notes on the Synthesis of
| Form_ earlier this year, intending to start a deep dive into
| Alexander 's work. This is something I've been wanting to do
| for some time, and kinda regret that it's taken me this long to
| even get as far as ordering the books. Now to find time to dig
| into them...
|
| _sigh_ So much to learn, so little time. :-(
| eternalban wrote:
| I don't think GoF got it wrong. The foundational essence of the
| approach that maps to software is there. What is wrongheaded is
| to expect a one-to-one mapping between two entirely distinct
| subject matters.
|
| CA's architectural approach, stripped of the new age verbiage,
| is reducible to bottom-up, local action, global effect. There
| are local conditions with recipes, and patterns of
| binding/connecting. Together with Frank Lloyd Wright, these two
| gents have mapped out two distinct approaches to what Wright
| called _Organic Architecture_. (Wright following Sullivan used
| a 'generative system', the famous seed-germ [1], to _order_
| and create space.) Both men are pretty big on Beauty, but only
| one actually delivered beautiful works. Alexander 's approach
| remains a theoretical proposition, unlike Frank Lloyd Wright's
| generative order approach (which he regrettably did not fully
| disclose to his proteges.)
|
| And having skimmed the post and the core program course, it is
| clear these folk don't actually understand software, or
| anything that is worthy of the name 'Beauty' in software.
|
| _" It is a view of programming as the natural genetic
| infrastructure of a living world which you/we are capable of
| creating, managing, making available, and which could then have
| the result that a living structure in our towns, houses, work
| places, cities, becomes an attainable thing.
|
| That would be remarkable. It would turn the world around, and
| make living structure the norm once again, throughout society,
| and make the world worth living in again." -- Christopher
| Alexander_
|
| I'm quite happy to have someone like Alan Kay pontificate on
| aesthetics of software, but Christopher Alexander is not
| remotely qualified.
|
| [1]: https://www.archpaper.com/2010/11/remembering-louis-
| sullivan...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I expect CA was as surprised as anyone when the GoF cargo-
| culted his ideas into OO software development.
|
| So far as I'm aware he never claimed any particular expertise
| or experience in software in any of the original books.
|
| The equivalent would be architects taking the design
| principles of Multics and using them to lay out buildings.
|
| That would be a bizarre thing to do. And it's no less bizarre
| in the other direction.
|
| What seems to have happened in practice is that the GoF used
| CA's work to give their own ideas about patterns in OO
| software development more credibility than it would have had
| otherwise.
|
| It's not that the idea of OO patterns is inherently bad. But
| pretending that it's somehow genuinely based on some
| speculations about built architecture is neither convincing
| nor credible.
|
| Having said that - the CA quote above makes perfect sense,
| and it is about beautiful software _from the end user 's
| POV._
|
| Which is a view that's often missing from CS and developer
| culture in general. Typically there's more effort put into
| forcing humans to act in bureaucratic, corporate, and
| computer-constrained ways, than in forcing computers to
| behave in ways that are inclusive, accessible, ecologically
| stable and robust, and organically open-ended.
| eternalban wrote:
| I suppose we can ask GoF authors if they needed credibility
| boost from an obscure (certainly in CS circles) architect.
|
| The quote does not make any coherent sense, it's a
| _sentiment_ decorated with buzzwords. As I said, if Alan
| Kay wants to hand wave CS utopia, heck, the man has
| certainly earned it, and his woowoo talk is actually
| intellectually far more densely packed and nutritious.
|
| Btw, I said nothing about patterns, OO, good, or bad. We
| also disagree about portability of concepts and viewpoints
| across disciplines. I studied architecture in grad school
| and engineering before that. And learning C/S via
| vocational route I found my EE and architecture background
| was beneficial and definitely informed my architectural
| thinking in software. I merely said you can not have a one-
| to-one mapping. Here an example: modular thinking ->
| engineering, architecture, software. But "Pattern Language"
| on its own is not fully informative of _conceptual_
| concerns of software architecture. That was the point.
| auggierose wrote:
| Fantastic talk, never came across this before. He is great at
| putting into words already back then what now has become quite
| apparent is missing in our current approach. I've never seen it
| formulated so clearly. I am not trying to do it here, so you
| better go and watch the talk.
| cproctor wrote:
| Can anyone who has read Alexander's work recommend one of his
| books to start with, which focuses on the core moral and
| ethical views, while being most relevant to CS? For context, I
| work in k12 computing education, designing new kinds of
| computing experiences for children.
| ethanbond wrote:
| IMO A Pattern Language really hits the moral and ethical
| component very well though the format is a bit odd. Notes on
| the Synthesis of Form is potentially more pragmatically
| useful to someone working in software.
|
| His wife and some of his proteges teach a program called
| Building Beauty that forwards his thinking in architecture
| and I know that they use The Nature of Order. I haven't read
| it yet but I suspect there's good reason they use that one as
| the basis of their program.
| trgn wrote:
| The format is odd indeed. In retrospect, it's really bold
| to basically build their thesis by example (although
| pattern language could be considered as a complement to
| their timeless way of building volume, like a plates volume
| of an art history publication).
|
| The great part is not the details of the actual patterns,
| sometimes they just seem plain wrong (e.g. guidelines for
| roof massing is what mcmansioms are doing today). The power
| of the book really is the edifice they create, the making
| real and making concrete of the harmony between large and
| small scale, something which is generally only felt. Crazy
| ambitious.
|
| The moral dimension is not made explicit, and in hindsight,
| it seems to be injected really subversively. An example:
| the key indicator of a healthy public realm is one where
| people feel comfortable taking a nap. It seems somewhat
| quaint, but then look around outside. Are the people
| sleeping deviants, or are they kindly old folk taking a
| quick little doze after feeding the ducks at the pond?
| Other examples about independent mobility for children
| etc..
|
| It's frightening how we debased our commons, made it
| intolerable, and inflict it on our poorest and most
| vulnerable.
|
| Pattern language reveals this not by rhetoric, but rather a
| slow stacking of example after example. It's easy to miss
| if you consult the book as a reference manual, rather than
| read it as a polemic.
| modernerd wrote:
| Building Beauty was new to me, thank you for the mention:
| https://www.buildingbeauty.org/beautiful-software
| harrylove wrote:
| I think _The Nature of Order vol. 1: The Phenomenon of Life_
| is what you're looking for. Going back in time, _The Timeless
| Way of Building_ and _A Pattern Language_ show the roots of
| The Nature of Order series. To look at a recent case study,
| _The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth._
|
| I also recommend looking at works by Salingaros and Mehaffy
| like _Design for a Living Planet_ , _Principles of Urban
| Structure_ , and _Unified Architecture Theory_.
| cc101 wrote:
| You may find that pages ix through xv of The Timeless Way of
| Building will give you a deep, useful, and quick
| introduction.
| twic wrote:
| A Pattern Language is the second half of a single work, of
| which The Timeless Way of Building is the first. From the
| introduction to A Pattern Language:
|
| > Volume 1, The Timeless Way of Building, and Volume 2, A
| Pattern Language, are two halves of a single work. This book
| provides a language, for building and planning; the other
| book provides the theory and instructions for the use of the
| language. This book describes the detailed patterns for towns
| and neighborhoods, houses, gardens, and rooms. The other book
| explains the discipline which makes it possible to use these
| patterns to create a building or a town. This book is the
| sourcebook of the timeless way; the other is its practice and
| its origin.
|
| > The two books have evolved very much in parallel. They have
| been growing over the last eight years, as we have worked on
| the one hand to understand the nature of the building
| process, and on the other hand to construct an actual,
| possible pattern language. We have been forced by practical
| considerations, to publish these two books under separate
| covers; but in fact, they form an indivisible whole. It is
| possible to read them separately. But to gain the insight
| which we have tried to communicate in them, it is essential
| that you read them both.
|
| The former book expounds the ideas. But it is a weird pile of
| ideas. Somewhat moral and ethical, also somewhat practical,
| and also rather mystical. The combination has a religious
| feel.
|
| The Oregon Experiment is a sort of prequel to The Timeless
| Way of Building and A Pattern Language. It's an account of
| the development and application of those ideas to building
| projects at the University of Oregon. It might be the most
| approachable explanation of the ideas. It has the
| considerable advantage of being a ninth the length of the
| other two combined.
| ghr wrote:
| +1 to The Oregon Experiment. It was the first I read and I
| think gave a great taste of a lot of the ideas in a way
| that was reasonably understandable. I wrote up some notes
| at https://www.garethrees.co.uk/2020/03/08/book-notes-the-
| orego...
| carapace wrote:
| It sounds like you might want to read "Battle for the Life
| and Beauty of the Earth".
|
| If you want to go deep his _magnus opus_ is "Nature of
| Order". It's transcendent.
| tylershuster wrote:
| The Timeless Way of Building
| rurban wrote:
| Definitely not recommended, only for hardcore anti-
| modernists. (ie reactionaries)
| tylershuster wrote:
| Well, that's just like, your opinion, man. I think it
| lays out a pretty succinct overview of the ethics
| involved in building any system in a wholistic manner. He
| changed his statements later to say that "the quality
| without a name" is, in fact, wholeness.
| bmc7505 wrote:
| SPLASH had another keynote on pattern languages this year. The
| analogy from architecture to programming languages seemed
| strained at best - the speaker spent most of the talk on social
| programming, i.e., programming humans how to act in certain
| social situations and making design concepts more explicit and
| user-friendly. He made a big fuss about what a successful
| consultancy he built around running workshops and distributing
| baseball cards with different patterns printed on them. I found
| the whole thing self-aggrandizing and borderline charlatanry
| for an academic PL conference.
| TedHerman wrote:
| It's high time software designers claimed competency in
| architecture. For example, what is your take on these?
| https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/architectural-community...
| justincormack wrote:
| This post by Dorian Taylor on Christopher Alexander is a good
| introduction I found https://dorian.substack.com/p/at-any-given-
| moment-in-a-proce...
| [deleted]
| dimal wrote:
| I've been reading "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" recently after
| seeing it mentioned in an Alan Kay talk. I had never heard of it
| before. Such an incredible book. Such an elegant argument showing
| how tightly coupled systems are inherently unstable. I wish I had
| read it twenty years ago. Made me wonder how much of the idea of
| structured programming was inspired by it.
| ghr wrote:
| In 2020-2021 I participated in the Building Beauty Online course
| (the architecture side) and the Beautiful Software seminar. I
| wrote up as much as I could:
|
| https://www.garethrees.co.uk/building-beauty/
| swlkr wrote:
| I agree with huge buildings causing a stress response and modern
| architecture being generally ugly.
|
| The nicest looking places are smaller in scope with buildings
| around 4-5 stories, densely packed together which also makes them
| walkable.
|
| Look at places like hillsboro oregon right by orenco station or
| delft south holland, these places are what I understand to be
| closer to human scale.
| eps wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander
| twic wrote:
| > Notes For 'Notes On "Notes"'
|
| Classic rpg.
| harrylove wrote:
| Looks interesting. Doesn't explicitly state up front, but this is
| the resource page for the Beautiful Software seminar.
| https://www.buildingbeauty.org/beautiful-software
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