Excerpts from Christopher Alexander

Christopher Alexander has a unique style of explanation that I find quite interesting. Normally, I am not one to ponder the meaning of life or one to try and draw parallels from seemingly different ideas. I tend to see things in black and white (with maybe one or two shades of grey shimmied in between). However, I think Alexander makes some good points and I do think there is an alignment between building architecture and software architecture.

The main takeaways that I got from Chapter 9 were that we should trust in the process. Define the architectural style and allow it to guide the project to completion. Software projects today are more elaborate and complex than ever. Having a single architect attempt to design every line of code in a system is most likely to end in failure. Chapter 10 goes on to talk about pattern languages which are unique in the way that they are interpreted. They provide the framework for building and help to explain why "things" are built in the manner in which they are and the uniqueness but yet similarities that exist between them. The final excerpt concludes with several general "rules of thumb" for building. All in all very interesting!