Unsere Welt zu verstehen:  Software Architect

 

 
What is a Software Architect?
 
 
We agree with the opinion presented in Every Developer Should Be an Architect where we read:
 
Consider programmer/software engineer versus architect as a study in contrasts (I used this post by Simon Brown as a research point for what people perceive to be the differences between architects and developers).

 

• Focus scope: Programmers focus on details while architects focus on "the big picture".
   
• Leadership: Programmers are led, architects lead.
   
• Seniority: Architects have been doing it longer than programmers.
   
• Cachet: Architects are important visionaries while programmers do relative grunt work.
   
• Tech Selection: Architects choose while programmers live with the choices.
   
• Skill: Architects are more technically skilled than most programmers.
   
• Organizational interaction: architects deal more with “the business” in meetings than programmers.
   
• Pay: Architects make more than programmers.
   
• Value: Architects understand why an architect is more valuable than a programmer.

This is how the industry at large perceives this distinction:
 
Architects are more tenured, more important, more valuable — they are technical people in high demand, but are often seen as being too important to do the things that earned them their stripe (writing code).
 
This is why compentent architects have to fight for time to keep up to date:
 
 
As soon as they do not write code anymore ( prototyping new solutions ),
 
they will no longer be competent architects (!).
 
 
Erik Dietrich & Gebh. Greiter, Jan 2016