On Feb 17, 2012, at 18:55, Owen DeLong wrote:
I also think that when we spend too many consecutive weeks/months/years behind a desk without going out in the real world, we become progressively more detached from the operational reality where our designs have to operate.
In software, this problem is a rather well known "Antipattern": http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ArchitectsDontCode (This is an "Antipattern", i.e. it actually means "Architects *MUST* write code". But the problems from doing this getting in the way are also discussed there, so Jeff gets some support, too.) Grüße, Carsten PS.: Donald E. Knuth said: "The designer of a new kind of system must participate fully in the implementation." So, the more cookie-cutter your systems become, the less important is the requirement to do this over and over. But having it done once, and recently enough, still is a qualification factor for an architect. PPS.: I'm less sure about the battlefield analogies :-)