How does an architect stay hands-on?

An architect who can no longer write code can slide downhill pretty fast. You lose touch with reality and start designing solutions that only work in a vacuum.
Rapunzel-architect is exactly about this.

So what do you do if an architect’s job usually is not about writing production code?

Here’s what I do:

• I used to grind algorithms on HackerRank and even got a gold badge.

• I write fitness functions for my architectures

• I build prototypes to validate hypotheses and reduce risk for the most critical decisions in a solution
  “decisions in a solution” for strict lovers of Russian 😄

• I bootstrap my own products like this and build small automation tools that make my life easier

• I do the dirty work on projects where developers do not have time to reach yet
  for example, helping clean up technical debt. At the same time, I stay out of developers’ critical and urgent tasks. I do not want to produce garbage code.

How do you stay hands-on?