Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Why are all great developers not the best Architects and vice-versa?

I have seen lot of exceptions though.

First the philosophical spin. Michael Plat says that Architect are analytic thinkers and programmers are logical thinkers and hence the mis-match. He gives a simple test to figure out whether you are a Architect or not. I failed the test but I still believe that I have excellent Architect’s prospective. :)


I think that real issue is that strong programmer fails to abstract or trivialize certain aspects of system. They are too involved in details and thus , are unable to see the system from 18000 feet.

As Survic said, "abstract a little -- not too high level, but a little bit higher than programming - "design pattern."

If you abstract too high, it is time to ask your management to promote you to astronaut or ivory-tower architect designation. Don’t mistake me, I don’t have any contempt for them. I do think that Corporate needs them also very badly.

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