When I was learning how to program, I programmed a graphics engine. It was about 10K lines of code, my first 10K in a single project. At one point I was making

When I was learning how to program, I programmed a graphics engine. It was about 10K lines of code, my first 10K in a single project. At one point I was making an object loader and didn't understand what hashmaps and hashtables were. I was making mistakes, debugging constantly and the complexity grew over my head. I sketched out a quick 'n dirty class diagram and how everything related. Whenever I got stuck or confused, I'd look at the class diagram. I'd see where I was and noted to myself what I already implemented and what still needed to be implemented. I also asked myself if I was stuck with a high level (UML) issue or more a low level issue (not understanding a certain datastructure). That class diagram was my rock and emotional support in coding up that object loader. So UML does have its place: if it gets too complex, but you know the design, draw out a UML-like diagram (or other diagramming methods) and it'll allow you to not have the high level picture in mind: it's right behind you on the whiteboard. Other than that, yea proper UML has never worked for me.