Michael Earls talks about two types of architects... the "Purist" and the "Realist"... as with any clasificiation there are a million gradiations between the two, and another thousands axis to think about the problem space...

I often get depressed when I talk with people around Microsoft, you see, I'm not that smart. I know that eventually people will figure it out and then I'm going to get canned. (crap! my boss my read my blog!... uhm, actually I'm really smart and deserve a raise, yeah, that's the ticket). I had the chance to hang around with some of the super-bright folks around Microsoft a couple weeks ago, these are the type of people that worked on virtual systems when they were actually new. I've always said, one of my favorite things about Microsoft is that you are never the smartest person in the room.

If I think about Michael's scale, I'm definetly on the "Realist" side. After spending years working with folks like Anders Hejlsberg I've learned that the simplest and cleanest solution is often the best, and that the overly abstract or pure solutions often don't work out.