Christopher Alexander's "A Timeless way of building" is a very good book, but his "Notes on the synthesis of form" is perhaps even better - and shorter. And is

Christopher Alexander's "A Timeless way of building" is a very good book, but his "Notes on the synthesis of form" is perhaps even better - and shorter. And is maybe 10x more relevant to programming. I think "A Timeless way of building" is good reading so you see how object oriented design really is not based on it, but that the timeless way of building discusses higher level composition of systems based on constraints, and how similar constraints result in situations where similar solutions are applicable. Recognizing patterns in systems, and applying existing patterns of solutions on them is hardly unique to object oriented programming.