And it's not like this hasn't been tried with varying degrees of success prior to UML (IDEF/IDSS, IORL, even arguably arguably CORBA, etc.)- it just happened to

And it's not like this hasn't been tried with varying degrees of success prior to UML (IDEF/IDSS, IORL, even arguably arguably CORBA, etc.)- it just happened to get a lot more traction, and waste countless billions on worthless busywork. Objects sound like a good idea, and set the propeller-beanied programmer geeks (especially the academic ones who can't deal with the real world anyway) all aflutter, but really aren't worth the trouble in practice.