I find Miro the least vexing to use, but they are all pretty limited.
Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
31–40 of 83 posts
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#32draw.io
Indeed, very useful, because they can be embedded and have many integrations.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#33Lucidchart has worked well for me in the past, with built in AWS icon packs.
Do you use your AWS infra diagrams primarily as internal documentation? Or, where else do they end up?
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#34plantuml, it's hard to beat diagrams as code
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#35Well I make https://gojs.net, so I just use the GoJS diagramming library to make diagrams :D
Of course, its made for developers trying to make applications, not end users.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#36Also, https://draw.io/
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#37I use http://multiplayer.app/
It connects to your system using OpenTelemetry and it lets you automatically document all the components, dependencies, APIs, etc. I prefer it to static, drag and drop whiteboards because I get immediate visibility without having to waste time moving boxes and arrows.
(Of course you can still create sketches if you want, but the real value is in getting the information you need immediately)
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#38Mermaid - support in many markdown rendering pages. Embedding a ``` block in Markdown and having it versioned as text is the big win.
Graphviz - same basic reason as Mermaid, though no markdown support. Versioning text is a lot easier than versioning binaries.
Draw.io - if you've got to have a binary, this is it. In particular, it allows you to embed the drawing information in the image so that you can import a .png file into draw.io and get the drawing.
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#39Excalidraw for life. It can be embedded in Obsidian as well.
Draw.io is OK too, but the interaction is much slower when editing. The strict position/shape of arrows makes me want to clean things up way more than necessary and waste time.
I'd maybe consider miro or draw.io if I was working on something with other people and expected lots of edits and change history.
Mermaid is an interesting concept, but putting things in the reasonable location can be next to impossible and a single new connection can blow up the whole layout. And the integration is never quite polished - so many times I've been scrolling down a github page just to suddenly stop and resize a diagram. Then the panning/zoom is a bit clunky. (I know it's a client issue, but unless the defaults become reasonable, it's a mermaid issue too)
Re: Ask HN: What do you use to create diagrams?
#40I find Miro the least vexing to use, but they are all pretty limited.
Mind if I ask what kinds of limitations you're running into with Miro (and the other tools)?