Comment by logicprog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by logicprog | Hacker News Reader

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The way I like to explain the difference between the two approaches — and therefore the two educational requirements — you are outlining here is the difference between being a software developer and a software architect. A software developer is focused on developing a certain feature or fixing a certain bug within the context of an architecture that's already determined, rarely making decisions about how to structure the overall data or control flow of a system or what abstractions the system uses, but accepting what's already there; meanwhile, a software architect is going to be making those more broad abstract philosophical decisions that form the framework of how further features are implemented.

This is not to suggest that there is a rigid distinction between the two — all software architects are going to also be software developers in the process of building an architecture, or when new architecture is not needed, and many software developers will occasionally act as software architects. Nor is this intended to suggest that the architecture of a software project must be planned out in advance with all of the concepts and data and control flow either — just that there are points in the process of developing software where these large-scale architectural decisions about what abstractions to use and the flow between them must be made. But there do seem to be two somewhat distinct "hats" people who program wear.

does what you’re making matter to people or not? It’s like that no matter what you’re doing. Y’all can sit around here and discuss, “what is a software architect” all you want.

Reminds me of the architect we have at work.

By the time he was done formalizing what needs to be done and philosophizing about the best approach (while actively trying to prevent the engineers from hacking away), the programmers and hardware engineers delivered a production prototype that works just fine and that people want to buy.

I wouldn't say that the outcome is necessarily the same all the time, but the getting-nothing-of-any-value-done architect seems to be a common occurrence. We had one that by proxy stopped development on at least 3 projects I was supposed to be involved in because people wanted to make him part of the process, despite me having 10 or so years more experience and an evident track record of successfully greenfielding projects versus his 0. He ended up being literally the only person ever at our company to effectively get demoted.

Previously the same company had hired one of my previous coworkers as a "software/solutions architect" and he had basically the same trajectory but with him at least I suspect he was just burned out. With that said, seeing someone has the title "Software Architect" is definitely a signal to pay attention to whether this person is even remotely competent and/or produces anything of value. If they give off the impression that they are just supposed to hand off designs to someone else to implement you know you have a complete dud and a moron on your hands.

I think its good to separate function from title here. There are indeed good architects and bad architects - may you get the opportunity to work with the good ones.

Personally I find that those who ultimately build the thing they architect are the best to work with. As the build they gain experience, they bridge the gap between theory and practice, and the feedback loop leads to better architecture and better code.

But again, humans are in the mix, so YMMV.

You're true, my best co-workers have been architects who also where tech-leads and great ICs

Your comment made me think how any full-time uni professor is -suspicious- of not interacting with the real world. Any -good- professor should be doing research or on the private sector half of his time to not be just a bookworm

> Y’all can sit around here and discuss, “what is a software architect” all you want.

I think you're on to something. We ought to hire an architect architect to architect the role of the architect. Maybe we can build an architect factory to abstract that away and have architects set up on demand...

I don't think it's feasible to have 1 decent developer micromanage a team down to the function and data structure definition. At that point it's faster to fire the lot and just let the one developer you have do the job alone.

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