He is skeptical about the value of the "software patterns" movement and in a deeper sense critical of software in general.

He asks what standards we should have for software. In architecture, there is the Chartres and myriad other truly beautiful structures—what if we judge software by such standards?

I agree that it's a beautiful and powerful foreword.

To me, another key idea is software as a way of building. It implies that a computer system can be an inhabitable, ownable, sustainable thing made for supporting human life... like a shed, a tractor, a garden, a town...