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UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

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Re: UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

#3
post #2

What happened to UML? I remember it was everywhere in enterprise computing 20 years ago but seems to have disappeared now. Is it still around or did it go the way of SOAP, Java Applets? If not, what has replaced it?

Just my opinion, but I think that folks realised it was not much use for initial design, but could work reasonably well for documentation of existing systems.

Re: UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

#4
post #2

What happened to UML? I remember it was everywhere in enterprise computing 20 years ago but seems to have disappeared now. Is it still around or did it go the way of SOAP, Java Applets? If not, what has replaced it?

UML as a methodology seems to have disappeared, but bits of it (e.g. sequence diagrams) seem to have been absorbed by the profession at large.

Re: UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

#5
post #2

What happened to UML? I remember it was everywhere in enterprise computing 20 years ago but seems to have disappeared now. Is it still around or did it go the way of SOAP, Java Applets? If not, what has replaced it?

We still learned UML diagrams in school in 2019, though I have to say I haven't used it anywhere in my job

Re: UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

#6
post #5
post #2

What happened to UML? I remember it was everywhere in enterprise computing 20 years ago but seems to have disappeared now. Is it still around or did it go the way of SOAP, Java Applets? If not, what has replaced it?

We still learned UML diagrams in school in 2019, though I have to say I haven't used it anywhere in my job

[deleted]

Re: UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

#7
post #2

What happened to UML? I remember it was everywhere in enterprise computing 20 years ago but seems to have disappeared now. Is it still around or did it go the way of SOAP, Java Applets? If not, what has replaced it?

I'm kind of hazy about where the boundaries between bona fide UML and PlantUML are, but PlantUML is in pretty common use in my world - more for sequence diagrams and state diagrams than class diagrams though. Of course PlantUML has competition from things like Mermaid, but they're all much of a muchness.

My very non-scientific impression is that tools like Rational were mostly used for drawing class diagrams and ... that just turned out not to be that useful because the tooling didn't exist to round-trip changes in the code back into the diagrams meaning the diagrams lost parity with the code rather quickly. It was sort of useful in the linear design/code/deliver world, but we're a lot more iterative now.

Re: UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

#8
I used to work heavily in this kind of system modeling (developing tools for it, and dogfooding), and still use it when high-value for figuring out or communicating an aspect of a system.

Here's a challenge, to help appreciate the nature of these: try to find an error in the diagrams.

It's usually harder than you might think, since, even when you know the notation and metamodel semantics, it's information-dense talking about a domain.

You usually have to know or learn a lot about the domain, and/or have an domain expert you can walk through it exhaustively, before you can find errors.

And an error can be whopper: a single graph edge missing, or between the wrong vertices, or with the wrong adornments can have huge implications.

For example, large amounts of work that have to be redone, or a project abandoned, or a mess that takes 10x longer than it should to write, and 10x the tech debt going forward with a bad architecture, or a fundamental security flaw.

One of the mistakes many people make is treating formalized diagrams as "marketecture" visuals, like they only need for handwaving sales presentation slides, where there's some kind of visual for every concept they want to be able to literally point to.

Nope, if you have software engineers and domain experts communicating and reasoning about your system in only the fuzzy terms of sales/exec presentations, you're really stabbing yourself in the face.

Re: UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

#9
post #7
post #2

What happened to UML? I remember it was everywhere in enterprise computing 20 years ago but seems to have disappeared now. Is it still around or did it go the way of SOAP, Java Applets? If not, what has replaced it?

I'm kind of hazy about where the boundaries between bona fide UML and PlantUML are, but PlantUML is in pretty common use in my world - more for sequence diagrams and state diagrams than class diagrams though. Of course PlantUML has competition from things like Mermaid, but they're all much of a muchness. My very non-scientific impression is that tools like Rational were mostly used for drawing class diagrams and ...…

I just learned about UML earlier today when I wanted to bring in a mermaid flowchart into lucidchart. If you bring in mermaid using lucidchart, it makes it a raster image. But if you use UML markup, you can ungroup it and modify. I couldn’t get a good way to convert from mermaid to UML markup that lucidchart could handle. Ended up a dead end for me.

Re: UML diagram for the DDD example in Evans' book

#10
post #5
post #2

What happened to UML? I remember it was everywhere in enterprise computing 20 years ago but seems to have disappeared now. Is it still around or did it go the way of SOAP, Java Applets? If not, what has replaced it?

We still learned UML diagrams in school in 2019, though I have to say I haven't used it anywhere in my job

In the case of UML, I think enterprise consulting and tool sales might've already obscured much of the real value of semiformal methods, before a CS curriculum could sour students on it.

With ZIRP growth scheme startups hopefully over, and more of us having to get jobs building systems that work reliably and sustainably, we might gain a new appreciation for system modeling.

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