Design aesthetics: we seem to have a thread going on design aesthetics, seeded by Raph's link to Paul Graham's essay. The Patterns movement in software was inspired by architect Christopher Alexander's work in this area. In software patterns Richard Gabriel and Jim Coplien are the guys who've done the most work on the philosophical aspects. Gabriel's site has some good materials on this. Is beauty in the eye of the beholder, or is it part of objective reality ?

OK, here's a good PDF on Gabriel's site. Covers the Quality without a Name and everything else you need to know about Alexander's work. A lot more depth than the Paul Graham article on the same topic that raph linked. I've got Alexander's Timeless Way and Pattern Language books, and they're fantastic. The books themselves exhibit the Quality they describe, which is delightfully self referential.

Life: Antonia's done her back again, so I did the school run this morning. Talk about stress and pressure ! Give me a coding deadline any day.