Sequence diagrams, the only good thing UML brought to software development • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

dahwolf wrote: post #158

In some ways, software development practices have degraded since that era. It largely has to do with the need for speed which comes at the expense of careful consideration, quality, integrity and the formal standards that support it. In fact, I believe it pretty much killed the profession of software architect. Many teams had it as a dedicated role, and this indeed would be a person documenting/designing systems usin…

We stopped doing that stuff because it was useless. We eliminated those practices and that profession because it was actively harmful to making good software. All those decision making methodologies consistently lead to worse technology choices than one dude actually trying to write some code with the thing for half an hour.

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

#182

Post by lmm » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #139

0x69420 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"real UML has never been tried" significantly more interesting technological failures deserve dibs on this excuse

Some of these methodologies and their tools have been used very successfully. By people who built complex systems that really needed to come together and work correctly. I'm addressing the masses of us Webrogrammers, who classify all that space as "UML", and dismiss it. Not everyone is just going to be tossing (ChatGPT-assisted) sprint tasks over the wall, while calculating when to make their next job hop. Some teams…

> I'm addressing the masses of us Webrogrammers, who classify all that space as "UML", and dismiss it. Not everyone is just going to be tossing (ChatGPT-assisted) sprint tasks over the wall, while calculating when to make their next job hop. Some teams will have to build complex things that work, and they can benefit from informed and judicious use of abstractions and views on the system.

On the contrary, people who are doing routine webdev are the ones who can afford the overhead of doing this nonsense, whereas for people who actually have to make something complex that works it will sink them.

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

#183

Post by tandr » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

smusamashah wrote: post #70

https://sequencediagram.org/ is the best text-to-sequence-diagram tool. Its the only one of these which lets you draw sequence diagram with your mouse too and will generate text accordingly. Completely offline (localstorage) and also supports saving to onedrive and google drive.

This is insanely good, thank you very much for the link! Should be a great tool to "bootstrap" some diagrams during brainstorm meetings, or just to put into documentation, and be able to change them later.

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

#184

Post by cptskippy » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

dahwolf wrote: post #158

In some ways, software development practices have degraded since that era. It largely has to do with the need for speed which comes at the expense of careful consideration, quality, integrity and the formal standards that support it. In fact, I believe it pretty much killed the profession of software architect. Many teams had it as a dedicated role, and this indeed would be a person documenting/designing systems usin…

The problem you're describing Exists in all engineering disciplines. You don't hire firm to feasibility studies, develop a design plan, do a materials bid, sub contract clearing and construction for your mailbox installation do you? Most people hire a dude hanging out at Home Depot and pay him a flat fee.

The risk and complexity dictate how much architecture and engineering are involved and with all things, businesses will try to get by with a bare minimum. The automotive, chemical, and other industrial sectors invest a lot in software architecture and enterprise architecture because the risk is so high. But even a medium size e-commerce platform has very low risk or complexity.

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

#185

Post by mhandley » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

Sequence diagrams are very useful, but UML just adopted a representation that already existed decades before. For example, the original 1981 TCP specification in RFC 793 [0] has ASCII sequence diagrams (see figures 7 to 14, etc). I don't know if they predate that - less from that era is online - but I wouldn't be surprised.

[0] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793

Edit: there are a form of sequence diagram in an early FTP specification from 1971: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc172.html

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

#186

Post by mhandley » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:30 PM UTC

readthenotes1 wrote: post #45

Sequence diagrams were not original to UML. Sadly, I cannot remember the method they stole it from. I do remember it was created by a man working for Hewlett-Packard in Britain who published a book around 1993. Does anyone remember?

There are sequence diagrams in the original 1981 TCP specification:

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793

See figures 7-14.

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

#187

Post by doctor_eval » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

lainga wrote: post #179

dahwolf wrote: post #158

In some ways, software development practices have degraded since that era. It largely has to do with the need for speed which comes at the expense of careful consideration, quality, integrity and the formal standards that support it. In fact, I believe it pretty much killed the profession of software architect. Many teams had it as a dedicated role, and this indeed would be a person documenting/designing systems usin…

Has anything replaced UML? I mean, if there are teams out there that aren't shunning design, what do they use to create architecture diagrams?

I can’t remember where I read this (Martin Fowler maybe?), but I agree that “box and line” diagrams should be enough for most design cases.

I was eager to use UML when it came out but I agree with the article, the only thing I kept was sequence diagrams. Most of the rest of it was just a complicated way to represent stuff that is best represented in code or plain documentation.

I’m also not afraid to use stuff that’s out of fashion. I use simplified ER diagrams, and even flow charts on occasion.

But the tool I use most often in design is SQL DDL…

I have also used Mermaid (using a modified Docsy theme in Hugo) and it is also great. Using Typora to edit Mermaid is also excellent.

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

#188

Post by fmajid » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

mkozlows wrote: post #169

dahwolf wrote: post #158

In some ways, software development practices have degraded since that era. It largely has to do with the need for speed which comes at the expense of careful consideration, quality, integrity and the formal standards that support it. In fact, I believe it pretty much killed the profession of software architect. Many teams had it as a dedicated role, and this indeed would be a person documenting/designing systems usin…

Yeah, hard disagree on all that. As someone who lived through that era professionally, and who has had an "architect" title in the past, I was actually resistant to ever stepping into that role, because I had so many bad experience with the Formal Architecture Methodology crew, who would produce the most absurd and out-of-touch designs. There's a reason that "architecture astronaut" is a term from that era. Lots of p…

Seconded. I once went to an IBM seminar with Grady Booch and seldom have I heard such an inane string of platitudes. Architecture Astronauts are the worst, and if there is one thing Agile can legitimately claim for, it's getting us rid of that plague.

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

#189

Post by esfandia » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

mhandley wrote: post #185

Sequence diagrams are very useful, but UML just adopted a representation that already existed decades before. For example, the original 1981 TCP specification in RFC 793 [0] has ASCII sequence diagrams (see figures 7 to 14, etc). I don't know if they predate that - less from that era is online - but I wouldn't be surprised. [0] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793 Edit: there are a form of sequence diagram in an ear…

Exactly, UML mostly borrowed from existing representations and its purpose was standardizing semantics and providing some consistency among the diagrams.

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

#190

Post by holoduke » Thu, Jun 15, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

radicalbyte wrote: post #117

holoduke wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe before you actually start writing code its nice to create some domain diagrams which you can convert to class diagrams. Saves a ton of time. And you have good discussions about the general high level workings of an architecture. Can be done on a whiteboard. Make some pics and start coding.

Assuming that you're using a modern IDE: it is an order of magnitude quicker to model the domain (classes + attributes) in code and project them as diagrams, say with graphvis. High level boxes are great for thinking about systems but the key there is abstraction - minimal viable level of detail..

Dont you want to discuss and talk about a design before you even touch a keyboard? In my projects we always discus high level overviews with pen and whiteboards. Nobody should even dare to touch a keyboard.