On top of my J2EE consultancy work, I teach one evening a week at university. The topics I cover go from UML modelling, Design Patterns, Refactoring, Java APIs, Servlets, JSP, XML, EJBs, XML to Web Services . My students have to do a weekly exercise and therefore have to model and write lots of Java classes (and refactor them from time to time). At the end of the year, I always have the same question: « Will I have to do all this work if I become an architect? » In my students heads, an architect is someone who doesn’t write code anymore (even better, someone who never had to write a line in his/her entire life, not even a Hello World). I try to tell them that it’s difficult to link customers, project leaders and developers without having any technical background. One day I was so frustrated, that in my following class I introduced two new slides so we could talk about it. Here is the content (picked up from Enterprise Architect for J2EE Technology book): “The ideal architect should be a person of letters, a mathematician, familiar with historical studies, a diligent student of philisophy, acquainted with music, not ignorant of medecine, learned in the responses of juriconsults, familiar with astronomy and astronomical calculations – Vitruvius, 25 BC” After lots of laughter I showed them the following slide which contains more accurate information based on our job (Software […]
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