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UML is still taught in universities here in france. It's like the mafia of abstraction-oriented, ivory tower developer who just explain the software but never w

by jokoon 6y ago

UML is still taught in universities here in france. It's like the mafia of abstraction-oriented, ivory tower developer who just explain the software but never write code. I guess one upside is that developers know how to make diagrams. Which is good.

ridethebike 6y ago
UML is totally useless abstraction and all until you somehow need to explain your architecture to 30+ developers/architects on the call.
- jokoon 6y ago
  "architecture"? A simple diagram with components and how they communicate is pretty explanatory if you want a bird's eye view. UML seems to try to be too specific and detailed when it comes to relationships, inheritances, hierarchies, etc but it's often just unnecessary, because every language/API/framework have their own way of dealing with details. Not to mention that UML is often poorly specified and developers will not really respect the UML spec. It's like math, there are dialects. Programming language are better just because they have a proper parser that will verify correctness. It's hard to understand why one would verify the correctness of an UML diagram.
  - ridethebike 6y ago
    It does not have to be fully correct UML diagram. But knowing the difference and being able to draw more or less accurate high-level sequence/flow/component diagram is vital skill for skilled developer. >> Programming language are better just because Programming language is usually poor choice for explaining design of system
danpalmer 6y ago
I was taught "UML" at university (UK, 10 years ago). I say "UML" because while that was the name given, we probably only had a few hours on it in my entire degree, and it was essentially boxes and arrows, with class names and methods, and the basics of sequence diagrams. I think it was valuable. I suspect many engineers use simple diagrams in notebooks on a regular basis, and by introducing it very early in the degree it gave us another tool to help think about the code we were writing. It wasn't actually UML, but I think it's a good thing to cover at the beginning of a course.
908B64B197 6y ago
It's not a bad thing to teach. Between "box diagrams" and "box diagrams with well-defined arrow types" I'd pick the later. Same thing with design patterns: they won't solve all your problems but give engineers a common vocabulary.

by jokoon 6y ago

ridethebike 6y ago

UML is totally useless abstraction and all until you somehow need to explain your architecture to 30+ developers/architects on the call.

jokoon 6y ago
"architecture"? A simple diagram with components and how they communicate is pretty explanatory if you want a bird's eye view. UML seems to try to be too specific and detailed when it comes to relationships, inheritances, hierarchies, etc but it's often just unnecessary, because every language/API/framework have their own way of dealing with details. Not to mention that UML is often poorly specified and developers will not really respect the UML spec. It's like math, there are dialects. Programming language are better just because they have a proper parser that will verify correctness. It's hard to understand why one would verify the correctness of an UML diagram.
- ridethebike 6y ago
  It does not have to be fully correct UML diagram. But knowing the difference and being able to draw more or less accurate high-level sequence/flow/component diagram is vital skill for skilled developer. >> Programming language are better just because Programming language is usually poor choice for explaining design of system

danpalmer 6y ago

I was taught "UML" at university (UK, 10 years ago). I say "UML" because while that was the name given, we probably only had a few hours on it in my entire degree, and it was essentially boxes and arrows, with class names and methods, and the basics of sequence diagrams. I think it was valuable. I suspect many engineers use simple diagrams in notebooks on a regular basis, and by introducing it very early in the degree it gave us another tool to help think about the code we were writing. It wasn't actually UML, but I think it's a good thing to cover at the beginning of a course.

908B64B197 6y ago

It's not a bad thing to teach. Between "box diagrams" and "box diagrams with well-defined arrow types" I'd pick the later. Same thing with design patterns: they won't solve all your problems but give engineers a common vocabulary.