Architecture astronaut

"The ability to create an illusion of knowledge among people who don't know any better is really a trait of a shrewd salesperson, not a software architect." - Alex E. Bell on ACM Communications Jan 2009

I remember Joel also made similar discovery that we sometimes got scared by architecture astronauts for no apparent reasons. It is not that I am prejudiced, I found myself constantly come across with this type of architects in many consultancy organisations. To be fair, it isn't an easy job nowadays for even experienced people to keep themselves always refreshed and up-to-dated on latest and arguably greatest techniques. This is also partially due to the mis-conception many people have that being a modern architect means you must be a fashionable cell who waves the poshest terminology and latest releases of instruments. For those reasons, many astronauts start to earn their living in the space of void - which I like to call it void because very few of us really got a grip on overall trends and knowledgeable enough to understand what the heck is going on other than floating around because of universal gravitation. They like to intentionally confuse people by talking a lot of fancy high level abstract concepts in a somewhat confident but misleading ways. Jon once assured me that he also has this "physical/chemical reaction to people who are lazy, stupid and dishonest". These astronauts most of the time have no real clue in what they are talking about other than their outstanding capability of stitching information pieces and managing to express to others in an 'organised' manner; manipulating human weakness - somehow I think this is the definition of being evil.

These astronauts will prosper until we put our feet down in way of inquiring, believing and executing. They will find ways to get into organisations, most likely in architecture positions, and start to cause significant damages, although there will be a period of time they could manage to cover the truth and successfully shift the blames and responsibilities to silly things like politics, infrastructure, tools, engineers etc. After a period of exposure, sooner or later these astronauts would not accustom to the earthy life - their high level teachings go busted. Sadly, at this point of time, more often than not, detrimental effects have already taken place.