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Comment by basdp | Hacker News Reader

Man, it seems like you totally lost connection with technology. There is no value in an architect who doesn’t code (none, if you think otherwise you’ve worked too long in enterprises that don’t deliver enough value to stay relevant the coming years). Just use whatever drawing tools you know and draw up your diagrams. Should never take you hours to draw them up. How complex are they? If they take you so long, you probably are documenting way too much or are using way too complex architectures.

I feel the solution to your problem is more in the application than the tools. Try moving towards architectures like micro services. KISS. Then use the time you’re freeing up to keep connected to your developers and write code.

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One thing I loved about Amazon was having no architects, visio, powerpoints, UML in any of the teams I worked in.

Each service is designed, documented, implemented, deployed, maintained and advertised to other teams by the same few engineers.

Most documentation and runbooks are just text in wikis. If your service cannot be documented without drawing 10 boxes and 20 arrows you should split it in smaller services.

That's nice! Agile to the max!

not really

> "There is no value in an architect who doesn’t code"

This is debatable. The OP almost certainly knows how to code, and I think you can still provide quite a lot of value even if all you do is architecture.

It's much like saying a building's architect is worthless if they're not also doing construction work. I don't buy it.

Buildings are still built using stones, wood, cement. That doesn't change much.

In my experience as a DevOps transformation expert, 'Architects' are mostly old devs that have been kicked upstairs. The whole world changes each year to an extreme. You have to get your feet wet.

Shack - doesn't need an architect.

House - some do, some don't.

Commercial Building - yep.

Factory, Bridge or Infrastructure - you're insane if you don't.

Just like in construction, it depends on what you are building/expanding. Not all software is the same.

So you're calling (f.e.) Amazon a shack?

And the Burj Khalifa doesn't need an architect?

Sometimes the system doesn't need it sometimes it does. Not all software systems are the same.

I personally think the architect role is to look at the big picture first rather than trying to dictate the minutiae.

The point is that an architect who doesn't 'code' (read: doesn't know how the practical implementation is done) doesn't know what he is designing. It's too abstract.

A structural architect is called the same, but is not really comparable. Apples and oranges. At the least because the Burj Khalifa is still built under the same physics model as they used 100 years ago.

A shanty town?

“Try moving towards architectures like micro services. KISS.”

I don’t think you have worked with micro services, or more importantly have had to manage them.

All the time.

My initial impression is the same as the parent. Juxtaposing microservices and KISS seems weird as the "architectural complexity" of microservices is several times higher than a monolith. You're not only multiplying the points of failure but also increasing the difficulty of translating the domain into code, especially when it comes to reading and writing from a db in a safe and efficient manner. Someone will need to come up with an answer to handling transactional operations that span multiple services sooner or later (or I guess the team can just accept some small percent of data corruption, which is what I'm guessing most companies that do microservices actually do, willingly or unwillingly). Ironically I think the benefit of an architect is a lot more evident in a microservice architecture than a monolith.

Edit: though maybe my view on what an architect should do is different? I think of a software architect as the person that lays out the skeleton and foundations of a project and has the answers to hard questions. Very likely someone who actively codes or has solved very similar challenges to the ones being solved.

The problem with this approach is that it might be easier to build a monolith, maintaining it and the ops side of it is far more complex.

Nice answer! No one else is trying to help this guy turn his life around, they are just answer in his question like sheep. /S

Sometimes the answer to the wrong question helps you further down the wrong path.

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