{"name": "The Nature of Software", "short_name": "The Nature of Software", "start_url": "https://buttondown.com/natureofsoftware/archive/", "description": "Read the introductory chapter for free! In October 1996,  the architect Christopher Alexander  addressed  \"a whole football field\" full of software developers . He told them that  patterns \u2014which he and his colleagues had invented, and with which so many software people had become enamored\u2014were fundamentally  inadequate  for creating the kind of structure he wanted to see in the world. He told the audience he had a replacement in the works,  and then he asked the software community to help him . The replacement, which took another eight years to finish, was a four-volume, twelve-pound, 2500-page treatise called  The Nature of Order . Merely reading it is a project unto itself, let alone trying to apply it to software development. This newsletter is a serialized essay, a personal attempt by me,  Dorian Taylor  (of  Method & Structure ) to do just that: reconcile  the work of Christopher Alexander \u2014specifically his later work,  The Nature of Order \u2014with the craft of software development. The core of this project is to take the  Fifteen Properties \u2014the successors to Alexander's patterns\u2014and map them onto the the world of software. You will get the most out of this series if you have: A role in the software industry At least  heard  of  Christopher Alexander Not necessarily  read  A Pattern Language ,  The Timeless Way of Building ,  Notes on the Synthesis of Form ,  or   The Nature of Order , though obviously it won't hurt if you have. I will be mailing out new chapters to this limited-run, exclusive, subscriber-only newsletter every 2-3 weeks. Each chapter will discuss one of the  Fifteen Properties  from the text, and how one might think about it through the lens of software and software development. Once I make it through all the properties, I anticipate having to do at least one more chapter synthesizing what precedes it, and concluding the series, which I anticipate to wrap up sometime in early 2023. I have priced the subscription at  USD $7  per month. (or,  pay a more-easily expensed annual fee of  USD $70 ). What that gets you is the essay in your inbox as I write it. Join us! Subscribers: here is the archive. Or, if you are looking for a free newsletter,  my main one  bridges the gap between  my Twitter feed  and  my website . It's called  The Making of Making Sense .", "icons": [{"src": "https://buttondown-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com/images/6ac6b699-6a93-4765-84fc-e7dee364e4a4.gif", "sizes": "any", "purpose": "any", "type": "image/png"}], "background_color": "#FAFAFB", "theme_color": "#0069ff", "display": "standalone", "orientation": "portrait-primary"}