As someone who tends to conceptualise code visually, I find it extremely helpful to sketch-out diagrams of the processes and organisation before getting anywher

As someone who tends to conceptualise code visually, I find it extremely helpful to sketch-out diagrams of the processes and organisation before getting anywhere near the keyboard -- drawing clarifies my thinking unlike anything else. As such, I find the top-down UML-first approach to be much more natural, but I seem to be in the minority on this.