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    • AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
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The Quality Without a Name

24 Nov 2024 - 24 Nov 2024
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    • To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name. There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named
    • Can it be usefully applied to software? Alexander's theory is deeply grounded in actual space – when he talks about "centers" he means actual geometric centers (that are also centers for attention or esthetics or other things that are not pure geometry, but its more than a metaphor). Software systems create these sort of abstract spaces that we (as users or programmers) inhabit, but without our bodies.
    • Formal elegance, power, cleanliness are some software qualities that might be aspects of TQWAN. Scheme or Smalltalk for instance. Perhaps all successful languages and platforms have it to some extent, that is what allows them to succeed. Ruby on Rails is not my favorite ecosystem but it has a certain style and longevity and it has provided a way of life for many people.