Software "architecture" is just software design removed from software development, often performed by other people than those who develop the software, and pretty much a terrible idea. Agree? Disagree? Why?
@christian it's possible to be a valuable architect without being proficient in all the languages involved. for example, an architect can be comfortable with Terraform and OpenAPI exclusively, and still design good systems that meet developer and business requirements, so long as they accept input from stakeholders.
The ivory tower archetype comes from those who produce output without accepting input, and it's far from exclusive to architects. I've seen managers, product owners and others all fall into that trap.
@craignicol I strongly disagree that someone who only knows Terraform and OpenAPI can make meaningful decisions about software architecture.
@christian I would say it depends what they are designing. OpenAPI can describe domain models as well as any other language, and can describe security, relationships. And Terraform is the world of scalability and resilience, which many developers need assistance in. Between them, an architect can describe the data structure, the data and user flows, and discuss the functional and non-functional requirements.
I wouldn't expect them to estimate the work, or write all the acceptance criteria, but they should be able to speak a common language that would guide the front-end, the database, the integration, and the analyst developers, and aid them to map their work to the requests from all the stakeholders.