Many people have written on the topic of the definition of the various titles that us in the software field tend to have. Just for fun, I decided to get the definitions of these titles from the veritable horse"s mouth ...
- Engineer: A person who is trained in and uses technological and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems.
- Architect: someone who creates plans to be used in making something
- Developer. Definition not related to software
development, but relevant nonetheless: One who transforms raw land to improved property by use of labor, capital, and entrepreneur efforts.
- Programmer: writes the actual code for a computer program
True software architects are few and far between in my opinion: Anders Hejlsberg, Don Box, Linus Torvalds, and Bram Cohen are a few that come to mind.
I consider Rico Mariani an Engineer. His performance tidbits are based
around a pure scientific approach ... he always prefaces his tips with a warning to measure your results. Along the
same lines is Rick Brewster; He always has stats to back up his
claims.
The developer camp is a horse of a different color. Based on the definition above, I consider Jonathan Goodyear a developer. Sure, he's a great programmer, even a great
architect as can be evidenced by the numerous clients that hire him for architectural guidance. However, as a
business owner, he uses labor, capital, and entrepreneurial
efforts to create his "product". Eric Sink too.
Myself? honestly, I think I gravitate towards the engineering aspect of things. I"ve recently been focusing
on using tools such as the [
CLR Profiler](http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=86CE6052-D7F4-4AEB-9B7A-94635BEEBDDA&displaylang=en) to learn what things cost in the .NET framework. The way I've been doing things have worked up
until now, but I want to make sure that my solutions will scale in the future. Engineering sprinkled with a sprig
of architect so I can keep the big picture in mind, and developer so I can properly plan and scope my projects would
make me happy too :-)