Architecture as a default comparison makes sense on many levels. You don't make blueprints for pottery. The level of 'coincidental' design is much lower in architecture than it is in painting. There are much more specified 'primitives' that you can use in architecture that directly reflect the capabilities of the construction, etc.
And even before programming architecture was used metaphorically. 'Architecting a plan' and all that. It's not too difficult to understand how design in architecture differs from design in other areas, in a way that makes using it as a metaphor useful.
> And even before programming architecture was used metaphorically. 'Architecting a plan' and all that.
The verbing of "architect" is relatively recent, and certainly comes after programming. Historically, and outside the USA, one generally designs a plan, you do not architect it.
Architects design buildings, they do not architect them. Some kinds of software involve designing an architecture.
We should add that the use of “architect” as a verb isn’t a recent phenomenon. The Oxford English Dictionary has written examples going back to the early 1800s.
The earliest example in the OED is from a July 23, 1818, letter that the poet John Keats wrote to his brother Thomas after visiting Fingal’s Cave on the island of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland.
Here’s how a poem in the letter describes the cave and its distinctive basalt columns: “This was architected thus / By the great Oceanus.”
Your view of language is incredibly prescriptive. If I want to, I can say architects architect buildings. There's nothing wrong with that. If there's a useful distinction between designing and architecting then there's 0 reason I shouldn't bring attention to it.
For example. If 'to architect' is synonymous with 'design', would you say someone architects a logo?
You are welcome to say whatever you like, with whatever words you like.
Yes, this may have been common practice in the early 1800s, and earlier. It ceased to be common practice in the Anglophone world for most of the 20th century, and only re-emerged in the software development community in the final decade of that century.
The fact that a particular language habit existed at some point in time is often worth making to people who don't realize that language changes and shifts. But if you're going to do that, I think it wise to also acknowledge that the changes and shifts also involve particular language habits falling out of general use.
At the end of the day language is a carrier for meaning, that's all it is. Its history doesn't matter unless it confers meaning in some way (which it often does).
In my opinion saying 'architecting' is meaningfully different from 'designing'. If people don't generally do that, then their loss is the shade of meaning that that difference implies
Architecture as a default comparison makes sense on many levels. You don't make blueprints for pottery. The level of 'coincidental' design is much lower in architecture than it is in painting. There are much more specified 'primitives' that you can use in architecture that directly reflect the capabilities of the construction, etc.
And even before programming architecture was used metaphorically. 'Architecting a plan' and all that. It's not too difficult to understand how design in architecture differs from design in other areas, in a way that makes using it as a metaphor useful.