Engineering video
1:10 · 24 August 2025
Great software architects are first and foremost great coders, as system design is an extension of coding skills rather than a replacement. The speaker compares skipping coding to write architecture to trying to write a novel without being able to write a single paragraph.
Hear it at 0:12 →forget coding and learn system design and architecture instead. Coding doesn't matter because AI can code. You should look into system design. I think Satya Nadella said that a few days ago. Sundar Pichai said the same. Now, remember, a great software architect, it's first and foremost a great coder. Architecture, system design, they are an extension of your coding skills, not a replacement. And so, saying that you'll be a good architect or a good system design without knowing how to code is like saying you will write a novel, but you cannot write a paragraph.
It makes totally nonsense. The main user of your software architecture that you're building or your system design, it's usually first the developers. That's why we build microservices. That's why we build even driven. Because it's the developer that's going to use the system to extend the system. And that's why software architects are usually very good at coding. And they understand all the difficulties a developer will face extending the system and then they rearchitect the system to accommodate that.
So again, saying that you'll go into software architecture or system design without excelling at coding, it's a very big fantasy. There's no difference between a great coder and a great architect, it's just a natural evolution.
