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Before APL, There was Notes on the Synthesis of Form in 1964. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_o

Before APL, There was Notes on the Synthesis of Form in 1964. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form

fsloth 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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/hypothesis https://anagora.org/go/notes-on-the-synthesis-of-form/hypoth...
discreteevent 5y ago
From the introduction: > Indeed, since the book was published, a whole academic field has grown up around the idea of "design methods"-and I have been hailed as one of the leading exponents of these so-called design methods. I am very sorry that this has happened, and want to state, publicly, that I reject the whole idea of design methods as a subject of study, since I think it is absurd to separate the study of designing from the practice of design. In fact, people who study design methods without also practicing design are almost always frustrated designers who have no sap in them, who have lost, or never had, the urge to shape things. Such a person will never be able to say anything sensible about "how" to shape things either. Poincare once said: "Sociologists discuss sociological methods; physi- cists discuss physics." I love this statement. Study of method by itself is always barren.

Before APL, There was Notes on the Synthesis of Form in 1964. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_Form

fsloth 5y ago

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 5y ago

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 5y ago
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/hypothesis https://anagora.org/go/notes-on-the-synthesis-of-form/hypoth...

discreteevent 5y ago

From the introduction: > Indeed, since the book was published, a whole academic field has grown up around the idea of "design methods"-and I have been hailed as one of the leading exponents of these so-called design methods. I am very sorry that this has happened, and want to state, publicly, that I reject the whole idea of design methods as a subject of study, since I think it is absurd to separate the study of designing from the practice of design. In fact, people who study design methods without also practicing design are almost always frustrated designers who have no sap in them, who have lost, or never had, the urge to shape things. Such a person will never be able to say anything sensible about "how" to shape things either. Poincare once said: "Sociologists discuss sociological methods; physi- cists discuss physics." I love this statement. Study of method by itself is always barren.