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Title: The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander ISBN: 0-19-502402-8 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 1979 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $55.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.93 (14 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: this book blew me away
Comment: I bought this book because i am about to build a house. Coincidentally, i am also a senior software engineer and very familiar with design patterns in my field - i use them every day. They work very well for programming computers.
This book, however, literally takes the concept of living patterns to architecture, and, by extension of the act of creation, to life itself.
At the same time as being a great philosophical read, it's also a handy guide to building a house. Bonus points for the author: The book can be read in 15 minutes (reading the "detailed table of contents"), in one hour (reading only the headlines), or in the full. These modes of reading the book come from the author's emphasis of the whole over the parts, e.g. the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
I am not entirely sure that, as the author promises, i will now be able to go and build a house, without drawing a plan... but that this idealistic goal is in practice hard to attain does not make the incredibly deep insights in this book any less true or any less practical.
Like another reader said - the book changed the way i think about... everything!
Patterns as described in this book are far more refined than anything we use in computer science, and that he sees them in a much broader light. The central grandiose idea is the one of complete interconnectedness of the patterns - the whole, which is more than the sum of its parts.
Rating: 5
Summary: 5 stars for software building 3 for architecture
Comment: This is the book that set the whole software patterns movement in motion. It's a great read. It made me realize how the builder blew it when they made my house. One small design change, the house is 1 ft too narrow makes it impossible to put a screen door on the front door. It made them build a extra platform which causes people to fall down into the living room.
On the other hand, if I was building a building I'd use his visualization techniques before I drew plans. But I wouldn't use this technique to actually construct a building. It would triple the cost. (The essence is to build it as you need it.)
On the other hand he explains why swiss barns look "alike" without the need for a design review committee. (Or barns in general.)
As for software, Design patterns give programmers a way to talk about problems and solutions without talking about code. Its a great idea and I use software patterns all the time. (Get the GOF book for actual software patterns.) Read this one to understand how they came onto this idea.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Etymology of Software Architecture
Comment: I found this book so mesmerizing that I read it twice. During the first pass, I was surprised that the book was so philosophical and poetic in describing architecture. I expected something more technical. Later during the second pass, my goal was to find derivatives and analogies in software architecture. Based on what I found, I think every software architect would enjoy this book.
The writing style that I noticed in my first read of the book made me feel like I was reading an architecture bible. I hesitate to describe the book as religious, but the book's description "the power to make buildings beautiful lies in each of us already" and the description of the word "alive" giving architecture "the quality without a name" triggered an epiphany when recalling that the Bible says "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." and, "So God created man in his own image." This is why I'd say this book has a primal, sacred aspect, and this is why we like to build. Additionally, the book especially moved me so my mind's eye was opened to see "alive" patterns and to think about the morphology of architecture filling voids and generating towns.
On the second pass of reading, I was struck by this software architecture analogy in the table of contents: "16. Once we have understood how to discover individual patterns which are alive, we may then make a language for ourselves for any building task we face. The structure of the language is created by the network of connections among individual patterns: and the language lives, or not, as a totality, to the degree these patterns form a whole." Could this be the guidebook for designing enterprise software architecture?
Obviously this book was the inspiration for the philosophy and vocabulary for software architecture, and I thought some of the following excerpts were noteworthy paradigm shifts.
"The patterns are not just patterns of relationships, but patterns of relationships among other smaller patterns, which themselves have still other patterns hooking them together---and we see finally, that the world is entirely made of all these interhooking, interlocking nonmaterial patterns." This sounds like the difference between patterns of software architecture and object-oriented software design patterns.
"Each pattern is a three-part rule, which expresses a relation between a certain context, a problem, and a solution." Deja vu for software patterns.
"You may be afraid that the design won't work if you take just one pattern at a time...There is no reason to be timid...The order of the language will make sure that it is possible." Likewise in software architecture design, as one design pattern is considered at a time to see how it fits needs into the large picture of design. If this pattern is later deemed to be dead, it can be replaced by an "alive" design pattern.
"Next, several acts of building, each one done to repair and magnify the product of the previous acts, will slowly generate a larger and more complex whole than any single act can generate." This correlates to software refactoring.
"It is essential, therefore, that the builder build only from rough drawings: and that he carry out the detailed patterns from the drawings according to the processes given by the pattern language in his mind." When I read this, I thought about the metaphor to the software architect's vision and design. The software architect's design needs to be abstract enough to accommodate change easily, but yet simple enough so software programmers can understand it, finish the detailed component design and build the component to fit the architectural whole.
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Title: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein ISBN: 0195019199 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 1977 List Price(USD): $65.00 |
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Title: The Phenomenon of Life: The Nature of Order, Book 1 by Christopher Alexander ISBN: 0972652914 Publisher: Center For Environmental Structure Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
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Title: The Oregon Experiment by Christopher Alexander ISBN: 0195018249 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: December, 1975 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: The Production of Houses by Christopher Alexander, Howard Davis, Julio Martinez ISBN: 0195032233 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1985 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher W. Alexander ISBN: 0674627512 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: June, 1970 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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