General talk about software patterns

[Pascal Costanza <pc AT p-cos.net>]

Hi,

The hour and location of this presentation have changed. Here is the 
forwarded announcement of the change:

Due a large number of registrations, we have to move the talk "The Nature of 
Order" by Richard Gabriel to a larger room. Unfortunately, this was only 
possible by scheduling the talk one hour earlier.

The updated location and time are:

room G.1.023 from 13.00-16.00pm 

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but we hope that this way, a 
larger number of people will be able to attend. 

Registration for "The Nature of Order" is still possible, but please reply as 
soon as possible.

Kind Regards,

Charlotte Herzeel



On 4 Feb 2010, at 13:03, Pascal Costanza wrote:

> Dear Patternites,
> 
> 
> I forward the following announcement by Charlotte Herzeel to you. The event 
> is going to take place at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 
> Brussels, Belgium.
> 
> ************
> 
> The Software Languages Lab cordially invites you to attend a lecture on 
> Patterns by Richard Gabriel, Distinguished Engineer at IBM Research, 
> founding member of the patterns community, and widely known for his work on 
> Artificial Intelligence, object-oriented programming and the OOPSLA 
> conferences,  Common Lisp and the Common Lisp Object System, and his drive 
> to push computer science forward into radical new directions. 
> 
> Date: February 23rd 2010 (Tuesday), from 2-5 pm.
> Location: Software Languages Lab, VUB, room 10F720.
> 
> Attendance is free, however we kindly ask you to register by replying to 
> this email 
> tolectures AT soft.vub.ac.be
>  (preferably before February 15th). 
> (mailto:charlotte.herzeel AT vub.ac.be
>  for questions)
> 
> Please find the abstract and title of the talk below.
> 
> ************
> 
> The Nature of Order
> 
> Christopher Alexander is best known to computer scientists and software 
> engineers for his work on pattern languages. This work inspired the classic 
> "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software," by Eric 
> Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, as well as the 
> software patterns community and its dozens if not hundreds of patterns 
> books and 5 conferences a year.
> 
> Alexander is an architect whose real interest lies in understanding the 
> nature of beauty and its objective reality. This project has held his 
> attention for over 30 years and culminated in the publication of his 
> gargantuan 4-book essay called "The Nature of Order." In it he attempts 
> nothing short of proposing a new scientific method and cosmology to replace 
> the Cartesian / reductionist / mechanistic approach to science and the 
> neutral underlying space-time-matter view of the world; and while he's at 
> it, he proposes a *common sense* way to understand the incomprehensible 
> mathematics of quantum mechanics. (Along the way he also unifies science, 
> art, and the spiritual.)
> 
> We once believed his ideas had something to do with how to design and build 
> software, and the metaphor of software creation and architecture & the 
> built-world is still strong. His ideas about centers, life, & wholeness; 
> the Fundamental Process; the 15 structure-preserving transformations; deep 
> and personal feeling as a valid scientific means of observation; sequences 
> and the process of unfolding; the fundamental unity of function and 
> ornament; patterns as generic centers; the subdued brilliance of color; the 
> underlying "ground," "plenum," Self, and "the I"; and his use of sadness to 
> find beauty are hard to understand without understanding all of his work - 
> his many and convoluted books, papers, and essays, and the buildings he's 
> built - and even the arc of his life. He is a maddeningly simplistic, 
> complex, and frustrating man, filled with a luminous beauty painted in 
> grayed storm-swept colors.
> 
> I have taken the time, over the past nearly 20 years, to (try to) 
> understand his work, and to a degree the man. This talk  - not the talk 
> itself but the ideas in it - will leave you confused, profoundly smarter, 
> reeling, in despair, and suffused by joy about what is possible for us in 
> software and programming. Whenever I speak of Alexander and his work, I 
> feel like a shimmering bright and deceptive Prometheus.
> 
> ************
> 
> Bio: Richard P. Gabriel is a Distinguished Engineer (sic re: the engineer 
> part at least) at IBM Research.http://dreamsongs.com or:
> 
> "Black Out"
> 
> A tavern in Old Europe. Late in the evening. Participants at a psychology 
> conference chat.
> 
> Canadian: In fact I mostly go to computer science conferences.
> American: Really, is there anything interesting to discuss?
> C: Well, sometimes there is. I have high hopes for this conference called 
> "Onward!".
> A: What is it about?
> C: All kinds of things. It was started by Richard Gabriel, and he...
> A: Who?
> C: Gabriel.
> A: You mean Richard Gabriel the *poet*???
> 
> Curtain.
> 
> *************
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> Charlotte Herzeel 
> Lectures@Software
>  Languages Lab 
> 
> -- 
> Pascal Costanza, 
> mailto:pc AT p-cos.net,
>  http://p-cos.net
> Vrije Universiteit Brussel
> Software Languages Lab
> Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Pascal Costanza, 
mailto:pc AT p-cos.net,
 http://p-cos.net
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Software Languages Lab
Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium