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Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

workflows.diagrid.io

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Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#11

Post by mentalgear »

aqula wrote: post #10
raydenvm wrote: post #8

This reminds me of the UML/RUP era from the early 2000s.... Is that an attempt to revive or even resurrect UML diagrams and Rational Unified Process blending it with AI? I would bet it's all dead forever. I'm skeptical about diagram-driven development making a comeback. In my experience, developers today prefer more agile, code-first approaches because requirements change rapidly and maintaining diagram-code synchron…

Code-first is kinda moving towards prompt-first. A diagram is just another way to prompt, so I can see this making a comeback, esp. with AI taking over more and more code.

If it weren't for the ambiguity of prompts and nondeterministic nature of the model.

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#12

Post by d-lisp »

raydenvm wrote: post #8

This reminds me of the UML/RUP era from the early 2000s.... Is that an attempt to revive or even resurrect UML diagrams and Rational Unified Process blending it with AI? I would bet it's all dead forever. I'm skeptical about diagram-driven development making a comeback. In my experience, developers today prefer more agile, code-first approaches because requirements change rapidly and maintaining diagram-code synchron…

I believe in UML usefulness as a whiteboard/blackboard language. A fun way to explain what you need or what you imagine to be a good architecture, but that's all, it's a drafting tool. But then, why not using it as a communication tool ? You would draft something on the board, the LLM would generate the program. Sometimes it is simpler to draw 5 rectangles, name then and show their relationships in UML class modeling than to explain it textually.

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#13

Post by baumschubser »

I’m all in for diagrams in discussing software! When there is no whiteboard, I literally draw in the air to explain my point. However, doing real, orthodox UML/BPMN requires everyone to understand the official notation, the difference e.g. between an „association“ and a „message flow“ (and then the differences between UML 1.4 and 2.0) etc. Do people really work in environments where all stakeholders have that kind of knowledge? Big corps I could imagine, probably where heavy machinery is involved. Aside from those „we build a cruise ship“ megaprojects I have the impression that people say UML and mean the much more approachable „squares connected by diamonds and labeled arrows“-diagrams.

Wondering how no-code tools like this handle those discrepancies between the super-detailed specs and the real world diagrams

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#14

Post by genewitch »

mentalgear wrote: post #11
aqula wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code-first is kinda moving towards prompt-first. A diagram is just another way to prompt, so I can see this making a comeback, esp. with AI taking over more and more code.

If it weren't for the ambiguity of prompts and nondeterministic nature of the model.

Set the seed.

Reply to post: "any"?

[0] I accept large checks for allowing setting seeds on-prem.

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#17

Post by westurner »

d-lisp wrote: post #12
raydenvm wrote: post #8

This reminds me of the UML/RUP era from the early 2000s.... Is that an attempt to revive or even resurrect UML diagrams and Rational Unified Process blending it with AI? I would bet it's all dead forever. I'm skeptical about diagram-driven development making a comeback. In my experience, developers today prefer more agile, code-first approaches because requirements change rapidly and maintaining diagram-code synchron…

I believe in UML usefulness as a whiteboard/blackboard language. A fun way to explain what you need or what you imagine to be a good architecture, but that's all, it's a drafting tool. But then, why not using it as a communication tool ? You would draft something on the board, the LLM would generate the program. Sometimes it is simpler to draw 5 rectangles, name then and show their relationships in UML class modeling…

UML class diagrams in mermaid syntax require less code than just defining actual classes with stubbed attrs and methods in some programming languages.

Years ago I tried ArgoUML for generating plone classes/models, but there was a limit to how much custom code could be round-tripped and/or stuffed into UML XML IIRC.

Similarly, no-code tools are all leaky abstractions: they model with UI metaphors only a subset of patterns possible in the target programming language, and so round-trip isn't possible after adding code to the initial or periodic code-generation from the synced abstract class diagram.

Instead, it's possible to generate [UML class] diagrams from minimal actual code. For example, the graph_models management command in Django-extensions generates GraphViz diagrams from subclasses of django.models.Model. With code to diagram workflow (instead of the reverse), you don't need to try and stuff code in the extra_code attr of a modeling syntax so that the generated code can be patched and/or transformed after every code generation from a diagram.

https://django-extensions.readthedocs.io/en/latest/graph_mod...

I wrote something similar to generate (IDEF1X) diagrams from models for the specified waterfall process for an MIS degree capstone course.

It may be easier to prototype object-oriented code with UML class diagrams in mermaid syntax, but actual code shouldn't be that tough to generate diagrams from.

IIRC certain journals like ACM have their own preferred algorithmic pseudocode and LaTeX macros.

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#19

Post by bwfan123 »

Intead of "Step 1: Upload Your Diagram", if you could say "describe your diagram", that would take it to the next level. So you would generate a workflow from the description using an llm which the user could then edit. This takes out the painful part of diagram creation and makes it fun for the user. For example, for infra automation a description could be: "first download this from this url. then, run this command, then take the output and feed it to this, then reboot, email me if there is any problem".

Re: Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code

#20

Post by smallnix »

bwfan123 wrote: post #19

Intead of "Step 1: Upload Your Diagram", if you could say "describe your diagram", that would take it to the next level. So you would generate a workflow from the description using an llm which the user could then edit. This takes out the painful part of diagram creation and makes it fun for the user. For example, for infra automation a description could be: "first download this from this url. then, run this command,…

To make it less ambiguous, you could let the user describe the diagram with what the software is supposed to do in some sort of more rigid unambiguous reduced English /s
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