More about architects

I found this great Fowler's article which I think compliments well with my previous post saying that architects are programmers.

Then I found this other great webpage he wrote about software design.
In the paragraph Do you wanna be an Architect when you grow up? he talks about this issue. I think that the I'm not just a mere programmer - I'm an architect feeling he points out is one of the reasons people feel so much against this natural unification of responsibilities.

Just imagine a football team in which only forwards are supposed to score goals and discouraged to assist and midfielders can only assist but are discouraged to score goals, it would be just stupid the way resources would be wasted with this separation.

Now imagine a software system in which only the architect takes architecture decisions and doesn't touch code, and programmers only code and don't take architecture decisions. It is unnatural.

Wouldn't be better if all players, err, programmers could make that decision as a team? You would just listen more carefully to the experienced programmer that is the architect and you'd have to be more trained on design. But that has always been your responsibility, you develop software! A programmer without design knowledge (or will to improve it) is like a football player that can't make a decent pass.

Finally it seems Jeremy D. Miller reads my mind with this post.

So I got quite surprised to discover so many similarities. I guess this architects are developers belief is more popular than I thought and that can only be good!