My colleague Brent wrote a food-for-thought post about two different kinds of programmers: builders & architects.

The first ones, the builders, are the programmers who get things done. […] On the other hand there are architects. They are concerned about sturdy and structurally sound code. […]

These two types of programmers seem like opposites. They themselves look at the other group and often think exactly that. They have a different way of handling the same problems. The other group's solutions are so different, they can't possibly be right, or so it seems.

Builders often find architects too rigid and conservative. They follow the rules for the sake of following them, without any practical benefit. Architects in turn, think of builders as careless, too focused on results, instead of thinking about long-term maintainability.

Different programmers aside, "build vs. architect" is the eternal internal conflict when I want to make decisions. Striking a balance between "getting things done" and "getting things right" is tough.

Read the entire, beautifully illustrated post on stitcher.io.