Architects' technical/programming Expertise.

[Shridhar. Blr.]

Hello,

i want to understand, is it necessary that the Architect[or wanna be] should be very good in programming?
If there is a proj, which involves lot of technologies, say C,C++, MFC, Java, ERP(s), DB, .... etc. should the architect have worked on all these techs or only he can architect the project w/ or w/o the above programming exp. if he doesn't have hands on exp, will it not impact the project.

your thoughts please.

thanks,

[Andrew Monkhouse]

This is not related to the Sun Certified Enterprise Architect certification, so I am moving it to Jobs Discussion.

Regards, Andrew

[Andrew Monkhouse]

My personal opinion is that the architect would need to have worked with many (most) of the technologies in use at the project.

I see 2 potential problems:

If you are unfamiliar with a technology, you may not use it to it's full potential.

If you are unfamiliar with a technology, you may try to use features that are either non-existent or hard to implement.

Regards, Andrew

[Jignesh Patel]

i want to understand, is it necessary that the Architect[or wanna be] should be very good in programming?

If he is good then nothing like it. But regardless of programming knowledge, he should be good in analyzing the requirement.

If there is a proj, which involves lot of technologies, say C,C++, MFC, Java, ERP(s), DB, .... etc. should the architect have worked on all these techs or only he can architect the project w/ or w/o the above programming exp. if he doesn't have hands on exp, will it not impact the project.

There are different level of architects.
1. Enterprise Architect: He must be able to work on all the technologies as he works at bit higher level.

2. Application Architect: He need to have good knowledge on particular technology, C, C++ or Java.

3. Designer: This is a kind of pre architect role and sometimes App arch end up playing this role. They involve in very low level design, i.e. defining all the methods with inout attributes, helper classes etc.

Hope this gives more inputs.

[Elle Atechsy]

From my experience, it seems the more one moves up the ladder the less hands-on s/he gets. So I cannot understand how architects must have hands-on experience in the technologies he architects with. As the years move forward, and technologies change, and architects cannot be expected to have hands-on experience in all of them. Of course, any real architects out their please correct me if I'm wrong, as I am not one, and therefore is very curious about he answers to the following questions.

---So how do architects survive in their chosen career paths?
---After a solid fundamental background, for example in web applications or mobile devices, can just understanding concepts & methodologies be enough?

[Scott Selikoff]

"Shridhar. Blr."

Your name still does not conform to the JavaRanch Naming Policy. Please review the policy and update it appropriately. This is your last warning.

Scott Selikoff

[arulk pillai]

It depends on what type of architect you are

--if you want to be a Java/J2EE architect then you need to have some high level knowledge of Java/J2EE technologies and ability to drill down if required to.


--If you are a solution architect/enterprise architect then you need to be able to see a big picture of the different systems and have strong analytical and problem solving skills. Knowing the specific/main implementation technology could be a plus.


The Solution/Enterprise architects come from some development background but the implementation technology they used is useful but not mandatory since they see the bigger picture. Also architects like any other IT professionals need to keep their high level knowledge updated and current to remain competitive.