The Hillside Group is founded on the observation that software creation is one of the most difficult human endeavors, requiring the creation of novelty under pressure, without the benefits of a long tradition to fall back on. The Hillside Group hopes to help others recognize that at this early stage of the discipline of software development, artistry and invention are as much a part of software creation as good engineering. The world of software development is a mixture of concerns ranging from correctness and execution efficiency to the beauty and elegance of the architecture, design, and internal structure of systems to the overall aesthetics, usability, and humanity of systems and all the way to the organization of development and the manner of software production. This spectrum can be broken down into those parts that are necessary for the correct and efficient functioning and creation of systems on one hand and what makes those systems and organizations for making them "good," aesthetically pleasing, and humane on the other. That is, at one extreme are concerns about the minimal requirements to get the job done and at the other are concerns about the qualities of the software and the humanity of the process that produced it.