I agree with all of this for products. To a first approximation, you want to bump your head into reality as often as possible. But I would say software archit

I agree with all of this for products. To a first approximation, you want to bump your head into reality as often as possible. But I would say software architecture matters more for infrastructure like storage systems, operating systems, and programming languages than it does for products. I think a lot of the literature on software architecture is about those domains. Those things are harder to do iteratively. And language choice matters more in those domains. Programming is a huge field now, and a lot of choices are domain-specific. Including how much you should care about architecture and programming languages.