Why I don't believe in software architects • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#31

Post by paulbaumgart » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 5:45 PM UTC

alexgartrell wrote: post #30

jerf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame the myth that young hackers are somehow strangely more knowledgeable than their elders because of the putatively ever-changing nature of technology. I've always been suspicious of this self-serving narrative (in what other engineering field is this true?), but as I approach what passes for Old Fartness in this industry (30) now I know it's bullshit. All the twenty-year-old whizzes I know are experts at taking…

Though I agree that there's a lot of value in what more experienced people have to say and that people my age should seek out knowledge from you, there are a couple things that are also important to remember. Many of us "20-year-old whizzes" don't do what you describe at all. In fact, as a Systems programmer, it's not incredibly likely that you know 'better than me' what the implications of what you're doing are at a…

Clearly, we need a better way to judge insights than the age of the person who has them.

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#32

Post by hga » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 5:52 PM UTC

japherwocky wrote: post #28

smikhanov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not justifying the term software architect (I don't like it for other reasons) What are your reasons, BTW?

As someone who went through Real Architecture school, I find most software architects don't deserve the title. Architecture school is very hard, mentally and physically. The perk is the weird mystique that society gives us.

Hmmm, ignoring the school part, have you found some "software architects" worthy of the title? I know you say that implicitly, but I wanted to make sure and perhaps have you elaborate a bit on what distinguishes them.

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#33

Post by timwiseman » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 6:18 PM UTC

alexgartrell wrote: post #30

jerf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame the myth that young hackers are somehow strangely more knowledgeable than their elders because of the putatively ever-changing nature of technology. I've always been suspicious of this self-serving narrative (in what other engineering field is this true?), but as I approach what passes for Old Fartness in this industry (30) now I know it's bullshit. All the twenty-year-old whizzes I know are experts at taking…

Though I agree that there's a lot of value in what more experienced people have to say and that people my age should seek out knowledge from you, there are a couple things that are also important to remember. Many of us "20-year-old whizzes" don't do what you describe at all. In fact, as a Systems programmer, it's not incredibly likely that you know 'better than me' what the implications of what you're doing are at a…

You bring up some interesting points, but I must disagree with what you seem to be implying.

While it is true that there are many 20 year olds with very impressive tech resumes, many more impressive than mine (I went in the Army and did some other things before entering the tech industry, so I came in older than average). But they are the exception, not the rule. When I interview young programmers, most come as the post described with a CS degree and I hope to work 9-5 having done little-to-no programming that was required. At least from what I see in interviews, those are more common than the impressive resumes.

Next is, All of your experience becomes a hindrance when you start to follow your old steps to the "right solution" every time. This can be true in some cases, but again I think those are the exception, not the rule. Remember that most mid-career people, especially the successful ones and especially in technology, can be quite adaptable.

Also, remember that most disruptive thoughts are older ideas that are just now coming into their own. Lisp has been around for a very long time, but it is starting to take off now (at least more so than it was in the past). Thin clients are a very cyclic idea that once were the norm in an extreme with dumb terminals to mainframes, then gave way to desktops, then were talked about without much success, and now are seeing some success in netbooks/smartphones/etc.

Most of the time the more experienced and seasoned person can adapt and then leverage their experience with similar things even in a new, disruptive idea.

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#34

Post by jacabado » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 6:35 PM UTC

alexgartrell wrote: post #30

jerf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame the myth that young hackers are somehow strangely more knowledgeable than their elders because of the putatively ever-changing nature of technology. I've always been suspicious of this self-serving narrative (in what other engineering field is this true?), but as I approach what passes for Old Fartness in this industry (30) now I know it's bullshit. All the twenty-year-old whizzes I know are experts at taking…

Though I agree that there's a lot of value in what more experienced people have to say and that people my age should seek out knowledge from you, there are a couple things that are also important to remember. Many of us "20-year-old whizzes" don't do what you describe at all. In fact, as a Systems programmer, it's not incredibly likely that you know 'better than me' what the implications of what you're doing are at a…

True, but is much more important for "20-year-old-whizzes" to learn than to senior people, at least if you want to accomplish more than those people.

As a 1-year junior with crushed dreams by a proto-startup project and now working in a technology conservative environment I can say there is so much to learn in the first years (from bad or good examples, with or without mentorship) that everyone should review his attitude. Of course always keeping the ambition and with the goal of accomplishing the most.

To have success while young and without experience you must be allowed to fail, and to fail a lot of times. Out of frustation of course, I'm starting to believe it's really hard to have success in the early times. Of course close mentoring as in Y Combinator should help a lot!

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#35

Post by notauser » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 6:42 PM UTC

timwiseman wrote: post #33

alexgartrell wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I agree that there's a lot of value in what more experienced people have to say and that people my age should seek out knowledge from you, there are a couple things that are also important to remember. Many of us "20-year-old whizzes" don't do what you describe at all. In fact, as a Systems programmer, it's not incredibly likely that you know 'better than me' what the implications of what you're doing are at a…

You bring up some interesting points, but I must disagree with what you seem to be implying. While it is true that there are many 20 year olds with very impressive tech resumes, many more impressive than mine (I went in the Army and did some other things before entering the tech industry, so I came in older than average). But they are the exception, not the rule. When I interview young programmers, most come as the p…

You are not talking about the same people as the GP though.

The people who do 9-5 coding are clearly not often the same ones as those who have contributed to the Linux kernel.

What I have found is that, of the people I work with, there are some who are great at what they do. As they gain experience the style of greatness often changes, but the magnitude does not.

(I have even worked with people who become more risk seeking as they progress - they know it can't be done but they don't care as they are confident they can hack around it in time. Cooks especially, but some programmers too.)

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#36

Post by hello_moto » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 6:42 PM UTC

alexgartrell wrote: post #30

jerf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame the myth that young hackers are somehow strangely more knowledgeable than their elders because of the putatively ever-changing nature of technology. I've always been suspicious of this self-serving narrative (in what other engineering field is this true?), but as I approach what passes for Old Fartness in this industry (30) now I know it's bullshit. All the twenty-year-old whizzes I know are experts at taking…

Though I agree that there's a lot of value in what more experienced people have to say and that people my age should seek out knowledge from you, there are a couple things that are also important to remember. Many of us "20-year-old whizzes" don't do what you describe at all. In fact, as a Systems programmer, it's not incredibly likely that you know 'better than me' what the implications of what you're doing are at a…

I think it's good to see these kinds of prodigy contributing to high-profiled open source projects.

I've seen one or two of this kinds at Microsoft as interns. Boy they're really geeky. They have the technical chop. They will argue you to death how pointer works to the lowest-level of your hardware.

With. Exact. Details. And. Unmatched. Precisions.

At the end of the day, some of these people would write some crazy stuffs that a simple solution might work. Why is that? because they were already in "expert" mode in such a young age.

I rarely see "Uncle Bob", "Joel Spolsky", "Paul Graham", "Brian Kernighan", "Michael Feathers", "GoFs", "Martin Fowler" kinds from this group of people. In fact... I know none.

I don't mean to discredit this group. They're smart. But sometime I wonder if they would listen to advises...

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#37

Post by jacabado » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 6:45 PM UTC

japherwocky wrote: post #28

smikhanov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not justifying the term software architect (I don't like it for other reasons) What are your reasons, BTW?

As someone who went through Real Architecture school, I find most software architects don't deserve the title. Architecture school is very hard, mentally and physically. The perk is the weird mystique that society gives us.

As opposed to engineering school? Do you think the problems real software architects are ought solve are inferior to those whose real architects solve (if they really do it any better than the software ones)?

If you answer no to the last one you should read the Chaos Report.

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#38

Post by toadpipe » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 7:07 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #16

modoc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:) I think the biggest problem in the industry is that many of the "young people" (I'm still young, dammit!) don't really want to learn or be mentored. Seems like there's a slew of folks in the junior to mid-level developer arena who got into CS because it was going to make them a lot of money, not because they love to code. I love it when I'm working with people who love to tinker with new libraries and APIs, who ar…

I blame the myth that young hackers are somehow strangely more knowledgeable than their elders because of the putatively ever-changing nature of technology. I've always been suspicious of this self-serving narrative (in what other engineering field is this true?), but as I approach what passes for Old Fartness in this industry (30) now I know it's bullshit. All the twenty-year-old whizzes I know are experts at taking…

Pretty much the entire industry, as well as the academic system, is based on the premise that the vast majority of code can and should be written by programmers who will be borrowing heavily against great (in the sense of being large even more than in the sense of being high quality or thoughtfully designed) black box systems in the form of languages, compilers, libraries, operating systems, databases, and other applications that are written by a small fraction and are mostly built to make sure that the rest can't screw things up too badly. Leveraging Ruby on Rails to throw together a barely functional website/app is just one of the more blatant examples of the pattern that pervades the pipeline that now produces most of the software in the world.

There seems to be a large demand for software, and the system is good at producing a lot of software.

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#39

Post by j_baker » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 7:08 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #20

It seems to me that the biggest problem is not software architecture per se , it's when you have a software architect who thinks they are automatically senior to other members of the team. Software architects are (or at least, IMHO, should be) co-ordinators, not directors/dictators. Of course architects need to be technically strong, because they need to be working with the team leads responsible for each part of the…

Agree. Nothing is worse than an architect who's a closet manager.

Re: Why I don't believe in software architects

#40

Post by j_baker » Tue, Jan 26, 2010, 7:11 PM UTC

I think that we need to consider the scale of the organization you're going to work for. Are you going to find a "software architect" in a five-person startup? If you do, you should run far, far away.

On the other hand, a larger organization with lots of different teams probably has a valid need for someone to bring in cohesion.