posting an idea before I forget it
Christopher Alexander’s “structure-preserving transformations” take place within a domain, like a function of type Drawing → Drawing
there are also SPTs between domains, like Flower → Drawing
it seems nice to think of drawing a flower as a structure-preserving transformation
one reason is that you can choose what aspect of the structure to preserve
you don’t need to judge the drawing on overall realism, but by how well it translates some important “structure”
Picasso abstract bull is a great example of course https://t.co/OmxkDvc53W
(and of course this is also a series of Drawing → Drawing structure-preserving transformations, repeated applications of an essentializing process)
I thought of this while thinking about the process of inventing an “app”
Like, yeah you can be agile and do repeated Program → Program SPTs
But also you can think of how to solve the problem at hand with some kind of Reality → Computer SPT
so what easy and relatively harmonious process could I use to transpose my problem in reality into some computer representation that somehow vividly “gets the gist” of the thing, like an abstract bull drawing