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In my experience (UML) diagrams have 3 good applications: 1. As a visual aid during project planning meetings. Basically, in the stage where most initial requi
by bakuninsbart 5y ago
In my experience (UML) diagrams have 3 good applications:
1. As a visual aid during project planning meetings. Basically, in the stage where most initial requirements are on the table, it can really help focus a discussion on which architecture components to build, and how these should interact.
2. As a teaching aid for junior devs. The tough part is thinking of a viable architecture, and making UML diagrams is probably half the work a senior dev would put into actually writing the code. It is however really useful for teaching junior devs, because you can give them a direction while letting them figure out a lot of the details themselves.
3. In documentation, I think few things are as useful as having diagrams explain the components, behavior, data flow, chronology etc. They also look pretty and can "ease up" reading difficult documentations.
That said, except for point 3, and I think a tool like mermaid.js, which enables programmers to write diagrams fast and with little learning effort is much more appropriate.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoIn the last ten years (ever since The Incident) I can think of exactly one problem that seemed to require an arrows-and-boxes picture. It's the dependency graph for a project. I generate the picture from a Makefile. Nobody actually uses the picture. We only work on one program in that system at a time, and all we need to know are its local inputs and outputs. The Makefile ensures there are no cycles. It is admittedly somewhat unsatisfying to be unable to grok the whole thing at once. But that's the nature of almost everything in life.