Christopher Alexander, Father of Pattern Language Movement, Dies At 86 (cnu.org) 8
Christopher Alexander, a British-American architect and design theorist that affected fields including software and sociology, died on Thursday, March 17, after a long illness. He was 86. Christopher Newport University reports: Christopher Alexander, a towering figure in architecture and urbanism -- one of the biggest influences on the New Urbanism movement -- died on Thursday, March 17, after a long illness, it was reported by Michael Mehaffy, a long-time collaborator and protege. Alexander was the author or principal author of many books, including A Pattern Language, one of the best-selling architectural books of all time. He is considered to be the father of the pattern language movement in software, which is the idea behind Wikipedia. In 2006, he was one of the first two recipients, along with Leon Krier, of CNU's Athena Medal, which honors those who laid the groundwork for The New Urbanism movement.
In 1965, Alexander wrote a much-cited essay, A City Is Not a Tree, one of the earliest and most trenchant critiques of the dendritic, sprawl pattern of city planning and development. Other works include The Timeless Way of Building and A New Theory of Urban Design. Alexander was more than a theorist: In 2006, when he was awarded the Athena, it was reported he had designed and built more than 200 buildings around the world. In 2012, his The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth, tells the story of a school campus in Japan that was designed and built using the principles that he articulated (see photo at top).
In 1965, Alexander wrote a much-cited essay, A City Is Not a Tree, one of the earliest and most trenchant critiques of the dendritic, sprawl pattern of city planning and development. Other works include The Timeless Way of Building and A New Theory of Urban Design. Alexander was more than a theorist: In 2006, when he was awarded the Athena, it was reported he had designed and built more than 200 buildings around the world. In 2012, his The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth, tells the story of a school campus in Japan that was designed and built using the principles that he articulated (see photo at top).
A Pattern Language (Score:2)
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It's been about 30 years since I last read it; time to pull it out again. Also makes me want to re-read my Ching books.
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Re:A Pattern Language (vs. Synthesis of Form) (Score:2)
What's extra interesting to me is that (pointed out to me by my college advisor circa 1984, George A. Miller) that Christopher Alexander originally wrote "Notes on the Synthesis of Form" (published in 1964) which was about a design process that collected links between design issues and detects minimally-interacting subsystems and optimized the whole thing (ideally using a computer). That is in some ways (not all) related to what machine learning does with optimizing feature vectors. A Pattern Language was p
One of the influences (Score:5, Informative)
He is considered to be the father of the pattern language movement in software, which is the idea behind Wikipedia.
This sentence gives the impression of pattern language being a direct influence in the development of Wikipedia. This doesn't appear to be the case. Ward Cunningham invented the first wiki [wikipedia.org], the editing technology behind Wikipedia, in 1994. Wikipedia itself went live in 2001, a gap of over half a decade.
Pattern language [wikipedia.org] was a direct influence in the invention of the wiki:
The first wiki—the technology behind Wikipedia—led directly from Alexander's work, according to its creator, Ward Cunningham. Alexander's work has also influenced the development of agile software development.
This isn't to take anything from Alexander's monumental work, but his thesis of recyclable patterns appears similar to Richard Dawkins's conception of "memes". Both Alexander's Pattern Language [wikipedia.org] (1977) and Dawkins's Selfish Gene [wikipedia.org] (1976) were published by the Oxford University Press within a year of each other, so some cross-pollination of ideas is possible. Or maybe the ancestral idea behind pattern languages and idea genes was already floating around at the time.
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It may just be the simple notion that, what makes something work? is often better understood as a pattern, and if you look around, you can identify existing patterns, especially if they evolved unconsciously, say in how people arranged things, and so, as a designer (someone who is consciously trying to make a new thing, which also works) you can learn a lot by studying patterns. Then in software, again, maybe some projects become a complicated mess, whereas others seem to work well, so you'd want to study t
Re: One of the influences (Score:2)
The original claim is mixing two completely different concepts, demonstrating the author is unfamiliar with either the programming topic or the Wikipedias history.
The only link is that Ward wanted to document design patterns. So he made the DP wiki to do so. The Wikipedia uses the same underlying software concept as the original design patterns wiki. That is the link.
Saying the Wikipedia is based on design patterns is like saying As You Like It it is based on design patterns because you once saw a book on d
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