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Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

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Re: Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

#34

I first use paper and pencil, but then I transcribe and keep it up to date electronically. http://lucidchart.com has been my favorite service as it is free for simpler projects and can be upgraded if you need more complexity. I've watched the project grow from an idea, to recruiting developers in my CS classes, to a full blown project which has exceeded my expectations. It's exciting to watch!

Appreciate the callout for Lucidchart. If anyone has any questions or suggestions, happy to help [I work there].

Aside from the standard free account, there are also free Pro accounts for students who use an educational email address: https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/education/students

Re: Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

#35
- A variety of online software along the way (most already mentioned here, nothing cheap or good enough for the long haul)

- Dia

- Microsoft Visio (when available, makes nicer diagrams than above, but sucks at anything software modeling related)

- Enterprise Architect is supposedly the standard for the enterprise corp I work for.

Re: Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

#36
yUML ( http://yuml.me ) is brilliant for quickly putting together simple, nice looking diagrams. It's based on Graphviz and doesn't require graphical tools, just a basic text language, so you can throw together something for a demo in 2 minutes.

I'm working on a tool to parse Objective-C into yUML at the moment- https://github.com/darkFunction/DFGrok

Re: Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

#39
UML, network diagram, flowchart: http://projects.gnome.org/dia/

Sequence diagram: http://sdedit.sourceforge.net/

Also for the corporate world where only Microsoft tools are an option, I tend to just use MS Word, you can make diagrams that are good enough to get the message across, yet everybody has access to it without requiring a special license.

Re: Ask HN: What software for diagrams and flowcharts do you use?

#40
Pencil + paper.

Then zap it with my DSLR. Or if it needs to be published, use Dia and export SVG/png into target document.

I occasionally write out graphviz stuff from my code using a very light weight library I wrote (C struct to stdout) if I'm trying to visualise what is in memory at a point in time. This has been invaluable whilst knocking up a simple mark-sweep GC for a project I was working on.

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