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by etripe
2575 days ago
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You're right, current terminology fails to elucidate what it actually is we do. For one, real architects have regulations to follow and need to keep up with evolving trends. Maybe a journalism metaphor would be better. That would make it obvious our work is seldom done the first go around and also make it clear we can't do our work without sources - in my experience, that's what often leads to bad/fragile software. Like in journalism, there are obvious differences in quality and style between individuals. Objectivity is the expectation, but you'll find bias anyway. And finally, people might be able to intuit that time spent is hardly ever fully on just writing code. We could use editor instead of architect, distinguishing between exposé and article to make the distinction between deep investigation and one-off work. |
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True, and the same goes for engineers. I suppose the latter is another metaphor for the software development process/person: "..people who invent, design, analyse, build, and test machines, systems, structures and materials".
> need to keep up with evolving trends
This sounds like it could apply to much of software field, esp. web frontend.
> Maybe a journalism metaphor would be better
Good one! Software is definitely an art/science of writing, and about media, publishing too.
I also agree about the need for many "drafts", writing and rewriting. The metaphor might help stakeholders understand the process better, compared to architecture which gets built only once (usually).
I like how you chose journalism, and not just writing or literature. Journalism is associated with marketing/advertising, in which software is definitely involved. There's also the parallel of research and investigation being necessary preparation.
For the fun of it, I thought of flipping the direction of metaphor.
An architect is like a software developer, except their code is physical material and their runtime is space.
A journalist is like a software developer, except their code is human language and their runtime is the public mind..?