🚀 go-pugleaf

(I'm back.  Only 900 more to read...)

Susan Harwood Kaczmarczik wrote:
> Just so I can fulfill the official purpose of the list, I'll post some of
> my pet peeves in current usage:
> 5) "Architect" as a verb.  Enough said. (Shudder.)

Carol Carmick wrote:
> What irritates me about "to architect" is the fact that it was
> obviously coined by oily marketing types as a yuppie replacement
> for "to design."  I sense blueprints unrolled in the light of a
> matte black tensor lamp, an artfully ruffled $80 haircut, and the
> unmistakable scent of steer manure.  Yuck.

Uh-oh.  There goes my job.

Architecting and designing are quite different tasks in the development
of computers.  Computer architecture is (roughly) the determination and
organization of the functional blocks of a computer (adders, memory and
input/output devices, for instance).  Computer design is the creation of
these functional blocks from "logic gates" or transistors.  There is
generally a third task, layout, which is the assignment of the parts and
connections of the design to physical locations on chips or boards.

If all three tasks are being performed we might say that Bill is
architecting the floating point chip, Sue is designing the adder
and Chris is laying out the register bank.

All three are separate professions.  Engineers rarely perform more than
one of these tasks due to the different specialized knowledge and
experience necessary to do a good job for each of them.

Using "to design" for all three would be quite confusing.

--karsten, computer architect (with a bad $9 haircut)

"Will corrupt languages for money!"