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Learning Weird

A couple of decades ago, when a person was introduced in a meeting as the enterprise architect, everyone else knew this was a person of serious consequence. They knew everything that was to be known about the technology that operated the business. If you were there to peddle some product or service, you had to convince this individual that you knew what you were doing and that whatever you meant to add to their stack would make architectural sense. Over time, I have noticed a rapid dilution in the expectations one could have of a person with the title solution architect. Now that cloud is the way to go, enterprise architects are not as common - they are viewed as a part of the old guard. 

The ubiquitous solution architect of today is a a couple of notches above a self-taught programmer. This is not to generalize the community as there are many capable folks as well, but on average you need to temper your expectations when you hear someone call themselves a solution architect - they are neither particularly good at creating solutions nor do they have a holistic understanding of architecture. 

The few enterprise architects I still run into do have breath and depth, they understand what is going on in their shop and what is trending in the world outside that is worthy of their consideration. This is dying breed of talent that is sorely needed. Reading this Paul Graham essay about weird programming languages made me think about what it takes to program to solve for problems in novel and creative ways - something I see less and less of over time. 

So if you want to expand your concept of what programming can be, one way to do it is by learning weird languages. Pick a language that most programmers consider weird but whose median user is smart, and then focus on the differences between this language and the intersection of popular languages. What can you say in this language that would be impossibly inconvenient to say in others? In the process of learning how to say things you couldn't previously say, you'll probably be learning how to think things you couldn't previously think.
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