This essay is written by Federico Mena Quintero and can be downloaded as a pdf:

– Software that has the Quality Without A Name

Over the course of  The Nature of Order, Alexander manages to show that environments or structures that are built according to that method all end up having the Quality Without A Name. He calls this living structure. It can be measured and compared. It no longer has no name; we can now speak of environments with more or less living structure than others, or of programs with more or less living structure than others – and we strive to make have more of that property.

The link to A Pattern Language in the reference list is broken. The book can be downloaded as a pdf here.

About Federico:

Federico Mena-Quintero is a co-founder of the GNOME project, a popular free software project to build a graphical environment for Linux systems (gnome.org). He became interested in Christopher Alexander’s work when his wife and him wanted to build a second floor for their house. Since 2007 he has been promoting the use of Alexander’s methods for design and construction of buildings and software.