MJD says Alexander's central question is "How can you distribute responsibility for design through all levels of a large hierarchy, while still maintaining consistency and harmony of overall design?"
The only "solution" to this question in software that I'm aware of is, "hire a charismatic architect and let them do all the design" which is terrible.
Thinking about my team, I'd say probably a third of them are interested in architecture at all, and of that third, at least one has a punishingly minimalist aesthetic that the rest of us loathe. The rest of us are fairly scared of being wrong, scared enough to avoid making bold decisions.
GoF may be insufficient, but it's really the only pattern language we have. I don't even know how to think about this idea properly, which I consider a symptom of the author being onto something.
Good architecture is leadership based on transparent principles.
The hardest thing for a lot of people to hear is, "you're not wrong, but the thing you're thinking about isn't the essential one." Architecture is about finding the principles and axioms that apply to the situation. It also requires an ability to "let go," in that if your design is good enough, you are no longer personally necessary because the rest has been made obvious, and anyone can implement it.
Elegant thinking can seem obvious, and transmits a great deal of understanding simply. The purpose of architecture is to formulate something that benefits in scale to the efforts of multiple cheaper, less experienced people.
I'm not going to, for two reasons. One, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to make it possible for the world to identify the developer in question (and I doubt I could elaborate without making it possible) and two, it opens up a discussion about code aesthetics that is not likely to be productive.
The only "solution" to this question in software that I'm aware of is, "hire a charismatic architect and let them do all the design" which is terrible.
Thinking about my team, I'd say probably a third of them are interested in architecture at all, and of that third, at least one has a punishingly minimalist aesthetic that the rest of us loathe. The rest of us are fairly scared of being wrong, scared enough to avoid making bold decisions.
GoF may be insufficient, but it's really the only pattern language we have. I don't even know how to think about this idea properly, which I consider a symptom of the author being onto something.