3 ms·

The question is incomplete. It should be rephrased to specify time, e.g. should an architect also be a _former_ coder or should an architect be a coder 2 hours

by osipov 18y ago

The question is incomplete. It should be rephrased to specify time, e.g. should an architect also be a _former_ coder or should an architect be a coder 2 hours a day/month/year? I suppose someone could try to advance an argument on whether someone could be architect without ever writing a line of code, but I doubt that someone would get very far.

mojuba 18y ago
Former coder implies disappointed coder, doesn't it? Or otherwise what could be the reason for giving up coding, aside from illness and death? So an architect in the mainstream sense is someone alive and well who is NOT loving programming. A perfect candidate for managing programmers, indeed.
- michael_dorfman 18y ago
  "Former coder implies disappointed coder, doesn't it? Or otherwise what could be the reason for giving up coding, aside from illness and death?" I disagree, being a former coder myself. As time went on, I found I could be much more effective by leading a team (and then a company) where other people would write the code. When you're writing in a high-level language, you've got a compiler that is generating machine instructions based on your high-level code. When you are writing "managed code" in the .NET Framework, there's an additional layer of abstraction-- you are writing (for example) C#, which gets compiled into IL, which gets JIT compiled into you've got a compiler writing Intermediate Language code which is then compiled into machine instructions. Becoming an architect (or product manager, etc.) is adding additional layers of abstraction (and power). Your ideas are still getting transformed into machine instructions-- there's just a few more steps along the way.
  - mojuba 18y ago
    Except becoming a "pure" architect exactly means to give up coding. Drawing diagrams on the whiteboard or any kind of an UML editor - and only doing that is not programming. It's probably called "drawing diagrams", but never "coding". So I suppose what I said about disappointment is still true.
    - michael_dorfman 18y ago
      I can only speak for myself and say that it's probably been 5 years since I've written a line of code that ended up in production, but I don't consider myself a "disappointed coder". I still like to code in my spare time-- but at the office, I think I can be more effective writing code indirectly through coders rather than writing code directly.

by osipov 18y ago

mojuba 18y ago

Former coder implies disappointed coder, doesn't it? Or otherwise what could be the reason for giving up coding, aside from illness and death? So an architect in the mainstream sense is someone alive and well who is NOT loving programming. A perfect candidate for managing programmers, indeed.

michael_dorfman 18y ago
"Former coder implies disappointed coder, doesn't it? Or otherwise what could be the reason for giving up coding, aside from illness and death?" I disagree, being a former coder myself. As time went on, I found I could be much more effective by leading a team (and then a company) where other people would write the code. When you're writing in a high-level language, you've got a compiler that is generating machine instructions based on your high-level code. When you are writing "managed code" in the .NET Framework, there's an additional layer of abstraction-- you are writing (for example) C#, which gets compiled into IL, which gets JIT compiled into you've got a compiler writing Intermediate Language code which is then compiled into machine instructions. Becoming an architect (or product manager, etc.) is adding additional layers of abstraction (and power). Your ideas are still getting transformed into machine instructions-- there's just a few more steps along the way.
- mojuba 18y ago
  Except becoming a "pure" architect exactly means to give up coding. Drawing diagrams on the whiteboard or any kind of an UML editor - and only doing that is not programming. It's probably called "drawing diagrams", but never "coding". So I suppose what I said about disappointment is still true.
  - michael_dorfman 18y ago
    I can only speak for myself and say that it's probably been 5 years since I've written a line of code that ended up in production, but I don't consider myself a "disappointed coder". I still like to code in my spare time-- but at the office, I think I can be more effective writing code indirectly through coders rather than writing code directly.