This was codified by Charles Simonyi in his dissertation on Metaprogramming, which he implemented at Microsoft.
The idea was there would be one software architect called the Metaprogrammer who would write the design and specification for the program. All the other programmers would implement this specification in as straightforward a way as possible without making any design decisions. If a design decision comes up, they refer it to the Metaprogrammer. This way you can hire large numbers of cheap low-level programmers, leveraging the skills and experience of a few experts. The idea was ultimately that the mundane code should be auto-generated.
It took Microsoft a long time to recover, if it ever really did.
The idea was there would be one software architect called the Metaprogrammer who would write the design and specification for the program. All the other programmers would implement this specification in as straightforward a way as possible without making any design decisions. If a design decision comes up, they refer it to the Metaprogrammer. This way you can hire large numbers of cheap low-level programmers, leveraging the skills and experience of a few experts. The idea was ultimately that the mundane code should be auto-generated.
It took Microsoft a long time to recover, if it ever really did.