I believe that architects should learn to code, but I don’t think they necessarily need to code against every framework that their organization uses.
I think that having a good knowledge of programming languages, development environments, and production are almost as important as having a good technical base and a good knowledge of how the business works.
Why should architects know how to code?
- Understand what’s possible – developers have intimate platform knowledge and see the limits a lot more firsthand than most architects do.
- Enterprise patterns – most problems are solved problems if you know where and how to look.
- Forget the language – learn the concepts: this helps you to design better software that requires less code or configuration.
- Understand the technical debt and tradeoffs: it’s very difficult to understand the technical debt and tradeoffs being made without knowing about the code being written.
- Decoupling: it’s very difficult to design for decoupling without an intimate knowledge of how the system works
Wrapping It Up
Salesforce Architects whether they be Solution Architects, Technical Architects or some other type of Architect should have at least a good working knowledge of how to code.
Also published on Medium.
