Software that has the Quality Without a Name ============================================ This is an essay that appeared originally in the book, "Open Advice", edited by Lydia Pintscher [1]. Later, I gave a presentation about this during the 2011 Desktop Summit in Berlin [2]. This essay is about my journey through the theories of Christopher Alexander, a mathematician and architect who (re)discovered how to make buildings that are comfortable, functional, and psychologically nourishing. Alexander's work was then used as a basis for the well-known "Refactoring" and "Design Patterns" books, which are familiar to many programmers. My intention is to turn this essay into a more substantial work, with specific examples about software that exhibits the qualities that Alexander talks about. The web page for this is at http://people.gnome.org/~federico/docs/software-with-qwan/ Feel free to mail me: Federico Mena Quintero <federico@gnome.org> [1] Open Advice book with the original essay: http://open-advice.org/ [2] Presentation on Software that has the Quality Without a Name: http://people.gnome.org/~federico/docs/2011-Desktop-Summit/qwan/html/index.html