Software developers lament" If only software engineering could be more like X...", where X is any design-intensive profession with a longer and apparently more successful history than software. It is therefore both comforting and troubling to discover that the same fundamental philosophical, methodological, and pragmatic concerns arise in all of these Xs (see, for example,[23, 33, 43, 46, 18, 45, 48, 50]). In part because it is considered as much artistry as engineering, writings about architecture have most extensively explored and argued out the basic underpinnings of design. Even within this context, the ideas of the architect Christopher Alexander stand out as penetrating, and bear compelling implications for software design.