Philosophy is a real field of study, just as computer science is. You can't expect to dive directly into reading papers written by Knuth intended for an audien

Philosophy is a real field of study, just as computer science is. You can't expect to dive directly into reading papers written by Knuth intended for an audience of professional computer scientists without going through a great deal of preparatory work. Whereas you might find Alexander easy to read, it is doubtful his work would stand up to academic scrutiny or be useful to establish the concepts by itself, which is usually what the sources he would link to are doing.