QualityWithoutaName

What software systems do we know of that approaches A Quality Without A Name?

I think that the following attributes will be addressed well in a quality software system, regardless as to whether it's a code library, toolkit or end-user product.

• Usability - Is the system something that people enjoy using? Would they miss it if it was no longer available?
• Readability - Is the intent of the system clear and well presented?
• Configurability - Can the user adapt the system to his or her needs?
• Profoundness - Does the system strike the user as special or unique, but at the same time, insightful and correct?

(Yes, this will be a very subjective collection of lists!)

-- ToddCoram

• DonKnuth's TeX typesetting system (as presented in TexTheProgram and TheTexBook?): Initially confusing, but many of those who stick it out, it is an elegant and powerful tool. It can be frustrating at times, but I keep coming back for more. The source code is also a gold mine for programming techniques and algorithms.
• Smalltalk-80: Inspiring. Elegant. Thought-provoking.
• CM-FORTH. Chuck Moore's FORTH for his Novix FORTH microprocessor: Tight. Very small. Clean. Fast.

-- DaveSmith

A couple of years ago, I created a small framework in C++. For over 2 months I iterated over the design and code, laboriously trying to achieve some quality that "felt right." I succeded, for the most part, and then had to put it all aside. Then I discovered the GoF book and software patterns in general.

I know that code has traces of the Quality in there somewhere. I think it's time to go dig them out. I'll probably find already documented patterns. If I find other solutions that brings about the "peace of resolution of the forces" involved, I'll document them here on Wiki in hopes that out there somewhere, someone else has done the same thing. And a pattern will be born.

(It seems to me that the QualityWithoutaName and PatternMining are very closely related!)

-- DavidHooker

• Our customers needed ultra-reliable, fault-tolerant, software that could be updated in real time
• Many of the people in the organization followed tenets of Zen buddhism, and in particular, the Madhyamika school
• Graphical interfaces were an important novelty of that era

The computational cycles were triggered by external real-time events so, unlike most data flow languages of academic interest, Astra could handle real-time applications.

Because there were no side effects (no program state that didn't correspond to some world state or the need to remember an event), piecemeal growth was easy, even when the program was running.

You could literally program in patterns: constructs which, graphically, were a weaving of objects and the intelligent pipes that connected them.

Astra had a graphical form called GIL, which I still use today. One can write beautiful, minimalist programs in GIL and Astra--not minimalist in the sense of a cryptic APL program, but minimalist in the sense of capturing the structure of nature in ways that no single other programming language could.

I have never seen this beauty paralleled in any Smalltalk or C++ program I've since seen.

-- JimCoplien

Describe Software approaching Quality Without A Name here.