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I've known a lot of building architects that have never done construction, does that make them any less of an architect?

Thanks for the comment.

I understand in the building industry that there is a tension between builders and architects. However its my understanding that building architects receive an education which ensures they have a solid understanding of building techniques.

I wonder if this is the same in the IT industry.? Many IT architects are coming from unrelated fields such as business analysis, management or even accounting.

I find that troubling.

how is that troubling?

In either case they have higher education, they typically must have some qualifications to DO the job or they wouldn't HAVE the job (nepotism aside).

I would rather my architect had a solid understanding of Business, or Accounting (if the application was to be an accounting application) than to ever have written a single line of code, as long as they have a solid grasp of design, which isn't really hard to learn and sure doesn't require programming knowledge, its all about logic and common sense, neither of which you learn in school, and neither of which strictly come from a programming background.

Far too many programmers put far far too much weight into programming, WE are programmers for a reason, we program, but we are not architects or CTO's (often one & the same these days) for a reason, we PROGRAM, those positions require a different view than most programmers.

We see programming as a means to an end, but Architects need to tie in Business requirements (not design requirements, BUSINESS requirements), that most rank & file programmers see as useless, CTOs are often IT people with a grasping of Business, but they should be Business people with a grasping of IT. I want my Architect to know what the Business needs, convert that to a design and let me as a programmer DO it.

I don't want an architect who designs down to the very last spec of code how something will be written, which invariably Architects who come from programming backgrounds do. I want an Architect who comes from the background of the application I'll be developing, so they know what the USER wants, if the user ends up happy, I get paid more, if you let a programmer design an accounting application more often than not you end up with Simply Accounting v1.0 (a serious steamer if you haven't used it), it took 3 major versions and a slew of accountants turned designers to make it a halfway decent application, where as you have Quickbooks which was designed from the outtake for SMBs to do their own accounting AS an accountant, but on Manager terms making it almost an overnight success (lets not let recent work tarnish what had occurred in its onset, it was revolutionary).

And having worked for a many architects and CTO's who never came from a development background, and many that have, I'd much rather have the Business man turned CTO than the Programmer turned CTO, as long as they didn't come from a Marketing background, Marketing leads to the dark side, If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

Sure, my job doesn't end up as "easy" as it would if the architect was a programmer, but its more fulfilling, and I go home knowing the company will be there next week because the product sells well.

It seems to me that dgary is confusing Architect with Interface Designer and Requirements Gatherer. That's what a building construction architect does, but (right or wrong) in IT the term has come to mean Technical Infrastructure And Programming Patterns Specifier.

It's difficult to imagine that someone could do that without programming skills (even if they're a bit rusty).

give me a definition of an IT architect that doesn't include design and requirements and I'll hand you a Marketing guy