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Discussion on: Livable code, embrace the practical mess

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Ivan Babak

A great piece.

Let me disagree with one statement:

Architects always seemed a great way to keep structure clean, but like I said before, the team that lives in the code base is connected to it, the architect is not.

A good architect lives in the code as any other engineer, but has more time to dedicate on observing and noticing emerging patterns and reshaping the code so that it's more optimal from the perspective of maintainability. A mediocre one will just walk around and infinitely talk about abstract models and patterns in vacuum without actually making decisions and applying them to the code.

Even if you don't have an "architect" role, every software engineer makes architectural decisions daily: how to name things and structure APIs (functions, components, modules, data fields), where to put code, how to organize data flows between components, etc.