IBM recently updated their Software Architect Kit and one of the articles it links to is entitled Evolution of Developer Skills Is Essential for Job Survival, which states that developers need to raise their game if they are to survive in the constantly changing IT industry. That's fair enough, the industry is evolving and we all need to evolve with it. Personally, I'm not convinced that the industry will evolve exactly how the author thinks it will, where traditional coding will become a thing of the past, replaced by SOA and abstract modelling techniques (e.g. MDA). There are some very bold statements in the article, but the one that struck me the most is as follows.
Since architects model and do not write code, modelling tools teach you to work and think like an architect.
I think you know my thoughtson this, although I do agree with the part that talks about modelling. Somebody once told me that the key characteristic of a good architect is the ability to think in an abstract way. You can also think of it as the ability to not get caught up in the details all of the time. To some degree, modelling allows you to escape from the detail and see the bigger picture, irrespective of whether you choose a "model everything" or "model just enough" approach and irrespective of whether you use a tool or a whiteboard.
While you might not agree with the views being put forward in the article, it's worth a read because it presents something that will be new to a lot of people. At the end of the day though, architecture is about abstraction, not modelling.
