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Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

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11–20 of 427 posts

Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

#11
post #7

This title and article feels plucked out of my brain. Most of my work is a lot of integrations and the best way to get a room full of devs to get what is going on is via sequence diagrams. Every other method, formal or made up, is weak compared to a basic sequence diagram. You can expand from there if needs be but I find it gets people thinking in a more complete way, gets the details out and what ifs and what abouts…

I agree, not having to be an expert in order to understand is important!

Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

#12
post #8

Spot on, I agree that sequence diagrams are super useful, I see them used all the time in FAANG. I do really wonder why UML is still taught in universities, as the article states, it's pretty useless. I took a masters Software Engineering course at Georgia Tech two years ago and a big part of the class was learning UML. That time was mostly wasted as I've never used any of it and never met anyone who has used it. It…

Was it easier the second time around? :)

Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

#13
post #8

Spot on, I agree that sequence diagrams are super useful, I see them used all the time in FAANG. I do really wonder why UML is still taught in universities, as the article states, it's pretty useless. I took a masters Software Engineering course at Georgia Tech two years ago and a big part of the class was learning UML. That time was mostly wasted as I've never used any of it and never met anyone who has used it. It…

Why the university teaches outdated useless stuff? My guesses:

- For the university, it fills out offerings and takes up credit hours, keeps the tuition dollars flowing

- For the teacher, it's something they already know how to teach, so it doesn't require nearly as much effort to teach as something more useful but maybe less familiar

- Universities are trusted with the decisions of what to teach and don't face much short-term accountability, so there's no real downside to teaching a useless course for another year

- They probably don't know it's useless. (They also don't care to find out because of the aforementioned points)

Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

#15
I really love Mermaid Diagrams. This is one of the best libraries to come out. I'm writing a book, and being able to generate diagrams with mermaid and then customize the CSS to meet the guidelines from my editor has been fantastic. I've started including a lot more diagrams in my projects and documentation as well. It's just such a good tool.

Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

#16
post #8

Spot on, I agree that sequence diagrams are super useful, I see them used all the time in FAANG. I do really wonder why UML is still taught in universities, as the article states, it's pretty useless. I took a masters Software Engineering course at Georgia Tech two years ago and a big part of the class was learning UML. That time was mostly wasted as I've never used any of it and never met anyone who has used it. It…

Activity diagrams do a decent job too. But yes, sequence and activity diagrams are all I have used.

Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

#17
Yeah, Mermaid gets it. Mermaid . . wait a second . . oh, ok, these are the same people that do Mermaid.js, they're just trying to make a living doing it.

Another useful chart type provided by Mermaid.js is the git diagram, which I use all the time when brainstorming change processes, especially for other folks who might not be git-conversant.

https://mermaid.js.org/syntax/gitgraph.html

Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

#19
post #15

I really love Mermaid Diagrams. This is one of the best libraries to come out. I'm writing a book, and being able to generate diagrams with mermaid and then customize the CSS to meet the guidelines from my editor has been fantastic. I've started including a lot more diagrams in my projects and documentation as well. It's just such a good tool.

Thanks I am happy to hear that!

Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development

#20
post #8

Spot on, I agree that sequence diagrams are super useful, I see them used all the time in FAANG. I do really wonder why UML is still taught in universities, as the article states, it's pretty useless. I took a masters Software Engineering course at Georgia Tech two years ago and a big part of the class was learning UML. That time was mostly wasted as I've never used any of it and never met anyone who has used it. It…

Sequence diagrams aside (they are useful!), I also felt far too much time was wasted on UML in my university course. The only small argument I can see in favor is perhaps to encourage some thinking and discussion around software design among students in an educational context, even if I've never once seen it used in industry. I can't say I'd miss it's removal all that much either though.
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