I would also add Flow Diagram.
Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
141–150 of 427 posts
Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There was a lot of good thinking, but one of the adoption problems we had before UML (as tools developers and methodologists) was that many people got a poor introduction to it, and missed the whole point. Not really, UML was doomed from start due to increased time to market metric. And frankly you can read the code if you are working on the already built system. Remember that software usually does not need to be co…
You might enjoy looking a little deeper. For one example: > I'll also concede that state diagrams are good, but well.. they are also quite simple. One of the goals of state modeling is to simplify. A sufficient metamodel will include (in addition to states and transitions on events that people might see in automata theory and misc. CS education) less-simple features like concurrency, superstates, transition guards, m…
> good use of the abstractions of this "simple" diagram, and inspecting it, will tend to avert problems that even an unusually conscientious programmer might miss in just code
Very good point. If you have expertly written UML and an expert viewer, they will get quite a lot out of it. One of the biggest issues I have seen with UML documentation is that it is extremely difficult to keep it in sync with what the actual implementation does. In one of my past jobs we actually had started an effort to quelch this by generating plantml from code but it never really came to fruition.
Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#143Thinking "the only good thing" is understandable, since there's a lot of noise, but that talk discourages people from learning a lot of good stuff that's buried. Before UML, there were many methodologies. UML was started by a unified team of some of the most noted OO methodologists. There was a lot of good thinking, but one of the adoption problems we had before UML (as tools developers and methodologists) was that m…
>There was a lot of good thinking, but one of the adoption problems we had before UML (as tools developers and methodologists) was that many people got a poor introduction to it, and missed the whole point. Not really, UML was doomed from start due to increased time to market metric. And frankly you can read the code if you are working on the already built system. Remember that software usually does not need to be co…
Is ERD part of UML? I find ERDs useful representations of databases. They can be generated automatically and are very good for quickly locating the right tables for a query. So I wanted to add a comment stating this to the parent - but then I googled to check if they really are part of UML - and it seems that they predate UML and are not really related.
Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#144Spot 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…
I have an undergrad friend. Learning this last semester. It's still taught, and it's still not used.
Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#145Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#146Thinking "the only good thing" is understandable, since there's a lot of noise, but that talk discourages people from learning a lot of good stuff that's buried. Before UML, there were many methodologies. UML was started by a unified team of some of the most noted OO methodologists. There was a lot of good thinking, but one of the adoption problems we had before UML (as tools developers and methodologists) was that m…
>There was a lot of good thinking, but one of the adoption problems we had before UML (as tools developers and methodologists) was that many people got a poor introduction to it, and missed the whole point. Not really, UML was doomed from start due to increased time to market metric. And frankly you can read the code if you are working on the already built system. Remember that software usually does not need to be co…
> increased time to market
I've seen people spend days and days trying to save a few hours of paper design time.
We often do quick paper or marker board designs, which often have some UML. You don't want to spend more than 10% of your time on this, but it can save quite a bit of time to market. If someone really wants the design saved somewhere, we just take a pic and upload it.
Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Isn't UML about conceptual thinking first, before you loose yourself in editing?
That was my take on it. How do you get students to practice the process of thinking conceptually first, then evaluate how thorough the planning is, without some tool like UML? Its one thing to lecture your students on the necessity of planning ahead. Its quite another to evaluate whether or not they know how to plan ahead.
Granted, UML is not used hardly anywhere, but I must've learned 30 different specific software tools in college that I never used outside of college. However, I've used something like each one of them. I took a technical drawing class in high school and I still use some of the techniques I learned in that, even though absolutely no one uses t-squares, triangles, and actual paper in modern technical drawing today.
There's a fair argument re: how much planning and conceptualizing should be done ahead of starting the Agile process, and also a fair argument re: what that planning should look like (crude flowchart? UML-compliant class diagram?). But in rejecting the UML tool, are we rejecting also the idea of advanced planning too? Like, how completely do you need to reject advance planning that it takes the Agile loop to reveal that the customer actually needs software that uses an observer pattern?
Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#148Thinking "the only good thing" is understandable, since there's a lot of noise, but that talk discourages people from learning a lot of good stuff that's buried. Before UML, there were many methodologies. UML was started by a unified team of some of the most noted OO methodologists. There was a lot of good thinking, but one of the adoption problems we had before UML (as tools developers and methodologists) was that m…
Sounds like you never had to deliver something created with that god awful Rational Rose crapware. Who's genius idea was to use UML as a code skeleton generator? That is a perfect the recipe to guarantee your non-lead developers never gain any ownership nor intimacy with the software they are working on.
The only organizations using UML were bureaucratic heavy nightmare places to work too.
Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Class, component, package, activity and state machine diagrams are all useful ways to model the structure and behavior of a system visually. I completely agree with you. It's a good way for other people to present information, for me to look at. I just won't do it myself. It's not only me; and that's why it's dead. I won't do it because the first thing that comes to mind is how it will go out of date in a month, an…
I've taken a throwaway approach to diagramming, where I'll produce them more or less on demand for a meeting or presentation, but not think of them as an enduring artifact. PlantUML is my friend here because I can knock out ugly but gets-the-point-across diagrams in 30 minutes before a meeting and check them into source control, so I can then take the bones of older diagrams and rework them for a fresh meeting. I use…
That's a great approach that has worked for me too. I think plant is a great little system. Not only can you get your point over in a handful of lines of text but I have found out that it is quite easy to generate the plantuml programmatically. So instead of having to keep docs and code in sync you can end up generating your graphs in ci. The upside compared to big diagramming products is that plant requites no boilerplate and you can provably grep and sed most diagrams out of your codebase which is a quite low barrier to entry.
Re: Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development
#150Hierarchical finite state machines are nice too.