>Let me put this another way via an analogy: should the architect who designs your house also be required to wire the electrics, install the plumbing, and lay t

>Let me put this another way via an analogy: should the architect who designs your house also be required to wire the electrics, install the plumbing, and lay the blocks too? For better or worse, this is not a good analogy. Software is design all the way down, due to complexity. There is no realistic distinction between software design and software construction / implementation. Also, regardless of whether the software architect actually does the development work, he should be capable of doing the work. Therefore an effective software architect is a software engineer.