Armchair Architect

One who can solve all the software world's problems from his armchair but considers actual implementation to be out of scope. Usually identified by a casual dismissal of real-world problems that many people have struggled with. As well as a dismissal of everything that anyone else has actually built as crap.

They have lots of seemingly great ideas that will be all things to all people but they avoid testing them with anything as crude as reality or running code.

Examples of ArmchairArchitectures? (the only way to get off this list is to point to an actual implementation):

BlueAbyss (five years to get a spec?! Who are we lying to here?)
XanaduProject - Five years ain't nothin'. Although they did eventually deliver something. But nobody cares anymore.
FabianPascal on the state of database implementations.

A great example of ArmchairArchitecture, as seen on SoftwareProphet:

all OSes, commercial or research, are worthless (Unix is to be hated)
all programming languages, even Smalltalk and Self, are worthless
all web browsers, and the Web itself, are worthless
all P2P clients are worthless
the current crop of Wiki engines are all worthless
any and all collaborative applications I missed above are all worthless
UserInterfaces are all worthless
I know how to design any and all of these things to be at least 10 times better than they currently are
everything will change within 5-10 years, due to me personally

Oh, and:

programmers are all unethical idiots working for evil corporations
this will also change within 20-50 years, and I will also be responsible (in one of two ways, or a combination of them)

Classic.

This appears to be more like "sociopath" or "manic depressive" (in the manic state) than ArmchairArchitect.

Right, since according to the definition above, ArmchairArchitects are required to at least have some seemingly great ideas, and where are this joker's?

More from the same author, on SyndicateOfInitiative:

First Initiative has just gotten much bigger in scope, to certainly include:

consuming and rebirthing BookShelved (thank you Laurent for the inspiration)
transforming Wiki as we know it
forever obsoleting / supplanting IRC
provide a consistent framework of time and space to internet communication

It will probably also:

transform the web as we know it
become bigger than Usenet, supplanting it

Yee-haw!

Sounds like Facebook to me.

As an antidote, this is a response from (non-OperatingSystemDesigner?) LinusTorvalds that has some bearing:

: If you want "aesthetics", go play with microkernels, or other academic projects. They don't care about their users, they care about their ideas. The end result is, in my opinion, CRAP.
: Linux has never been that way. The _founding_ principle of Linux was "compatibility". Don't ever forget that. The user comes first. ALWAYS. Pretty code is a desirable feature, but if prettifying the code breaks user apps, it doesn't get prettified.
: Repeat after me: the goodness of an operating system is not in how pretty it is, but in how well it supports the user.
: Make it your mantra.

If you think that Linux, or any Unix, supports its users then you really are a bloody idiot. In fact, if you believe anything that politician (Linus) says ... -- RK

Thanks Richard. Now that you've cleared that up I can wipe Linux from all my machines and install the far superior BlueAbyss. Now where do I download that from? And does it have support for my BullShitDetector3000?