It is useful if you are able to generate code from it. I know one big software company (more than 3000 employee) that generate 90% of all it's code base (~20M lines of code).
Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#52It is useful if you are able to generate code from it. I know one big software company (more than 3000 employee) that generate 90% of all it's code base (~20M lines of code).
I bet they sell quality software..
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#53As almost in any case with computer science, the answer is "depends".
UML diagrams can be very useful to represent a system to someone which is not technical enough to understand code, but can understand the basics of the diagrams.
Personally, to myself it's usually more a waste of my time.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#54UML can be a great communication tool in specific situations but when it becomes a religion your organization will suffer. I'm older than most here, drank the cool-aid that predicted code generation and round tripping but spit it back up before the poison had a chance to set in.
A bonus comment for the youngin's ... When you hear that some new system will allow "the common man" to write his own software without developers, smile and agree with them because they'll come back when it doesn't go as planned and you can charge a higher rate for the resulting expedited project.
EDIT:
I should also admit that I liked (like?) the idea of writing code using diagrams. In the '80s I wrote a program I called "Flo-Pro" in Turbo C that never quite became self-compiling. It wasn't at all OOPsish or FP. In the '90s I wrote several tools in Prograph [0] (now known as Marten) but was stymied by the fact that I was the only one in the company using the tool. In the early aughts, I tried URL tools that promised to write my code from the diagrams - it worked for very simple code but I never saw round-tripping work.
I love drawings in general - my coworkers joke that it's not a meeting unless I have a dry-erase marker in my hand. But those diagrams are invariably system-level, architectural drawings. As others have noted, I also appreciate ERD as a way to visualize relationships in RDBMS. So as much as I like the idea, development stays in the world of text - I'm not holding my breath for some magic bullet.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#55UML use case, activity, and sequence diagrams are perhaps quite useful. I'm too lazy to make them :-) but I find them useful to consult at times.
The class diagrams that everyone is really thinking about when they say "UML" are imho kind of useless. It reflects a kind of obsessive OO purism, and taxonomical obsession, that was quite trendy in the late 90s, early 2000s.
But it turns out in most cases looking at a class diagram doesn't really tell you much about what software does or how it works. And in any case I personally find it easier to look at header files or source files to get a picture of how things fit together. Class diagrams don't really help.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#56It is useful if you are able to generate code from it. I know one big software company (more than 3000 employee) that generate 90% of all it's code base (~20M lines of code).
I wonder how that company pulled this one off. In my experience, UML diagrams end up either too shallow to be useful for code generation, or so dense that they're totally useless for communication with non-technical stakeholders.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#57No, I have always hated it. I rather be flipping burgers at McDonalds than use UML.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#58It is useful if you are able to generate code from it. I know one big software company (more than 3000 employee) that generate 90% of all it's code base (~20M lines of code).
I bet they sell quality software..
They provide value for a relevant number of enterprise customers, so somehow yes.
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#59Yes I do. When you have a team of developers with different model of how the system should work or works, it's usually a recipe for disaster. By modeling, we get to unify our thoughts and idea of the system. When starting out a project, I tend to lean more towards well labeled conceptual diagrams. I will also use activity diagram, sequence and state diagrams. While I have often read about people designing class diagr…
Helpinator already has basic diagram shapes (ellipses, boxes, arrows), and I just think it's enough for a help authoring tool. But the "client" is a bunch of cool old school guys from Australia, they bought an expensive license and plan to use Helpinator both for internal and end users docs, and I just can't say no without arguments. And arguments are that UML is still good for cool old school guys :)
holy crap! UML is for cool old school guys? that makes me what, great-grandfather?
by the way, do you guys do scrum?
Re: Ask HN: Do you still use UML?
#60UML can be a great communication tool in specific situations but when it becomes a religion your organization will suffer. I'm older than most here, drank the cool-aid that predicted code generation and round tripping but spit it back up before the poison had a chance to set in. A bonus comment for the youngin's ... When you hear that some new system will allow "the common man" to write his own software without devel…
The youngins say AI will solve this. They're wrong.