Function, Functionality, Functionalism
The requirements of economy
Useless work on useful things
The minimum condition
Form eschews function
Feeble and ugly
Functionalism can be a kind of religion
Each element performs many functions
The informing idea of functionalism
Same name in the same basket
The plan must anticipate all that is needed
The element becomes a sign
Classical absurdity
205. Structure Follows Social Spaces
Roaming and capricious
What are those borders made of?
Presentable
A strangely negative character
Sine qua non
The contribution that something in them yet compelled them to make
Something more is required
Mechanisms and organisms
The center of the way
The Evolution of Useful Things
The usages of life
Form follows function
Against form follows function
UI and Capability
Embracing design constraints
An Article by Adrian RoselliConstraints have been shown to generally improve innovation. Giving targets and parameters helps ensure a team is working in unison. Identifying what is out of bounds can further focus that team.
A Plea for Lean Software
An Essay by Niklaus WirthSoftware's girth has surpassed its functionality, largely because hardware advances make this possible. The way to streamline software lies in disciplined methodologies and a return to the essentials.
Beauty in flight
A QuoteAll of us had been trained by Kelly Johnson and believed fanatically in his insistence that an airplane that looked beautiful would fly the same way.
— Ben Rich, Skunk Works
Meditations
Gravity without affectation
From Sextus: The idea of what it means to live in accordance with nature; gravity without affectation, and a careful regard for the interests of one's friends.
Flesh and a bit of breath
Whatever it is that I am is flesh and a bit of breath.
Any life
Even if you were to live for three thousand years or ten times as long, you should still remember this, that no one loses any life other than the one that he is living, nor does he live any life other than the one that he loses, so the shortest life and the longest amount to the same.
A little thing
Cast everything else aside, then, and hold to these few truths alone; and remember, furthermore, that each of us lives only in the present, this fleeting moment of time, and that the rest of one's life has either has either already been lived or lies in an unknowable future. The space of each person's existence is thus a little thing, and little too is the corner of earth on which it is lived.
Praise has no part in it
Everything that is in any way beautiful is beautiful of itself and complete in itself, and praise has no part in it; for nothing comes to be better or worse for being praised.
Carrying a corpse around
You are a little soul carrying a corpse around.
As Epictetus used to say.
Avenge yourself!
The best way to avenge yourself is not to become as they are.
The clapping of tongues
(for praise from the crowd is simply the clapping of tongues)
Giving up the struggle
How shameful it is that, in this life, when your body does not give up the struggle, your soul should do so first.
Why?
The cucumber is bitter? Then cast it aside. There are brambles in the path? Step out of the way. That will suffice, and you need not ask in addition, "Why did such things ever come into the world?"
Poured
The light of the sun seems to be poured down, and to be poured, indeed, in every direction, but not poured away.
Wanting for nothing
Some day, will you be satisfied and want for nothing, yearning for nothing, and desiring nothing, animate or inanimate, to cater to your pleasures?
Laughter
—and my heart laughed within me.