You've said in a nutshell another of my issues with "visual programming will solve everything". If you take any non-trivial code base, or generally any non-triv

You've said in a nutshell another of my issues with "visual programming will solve everything". If you take any non-trivial code base, or generally any non-trivial algorithm, and you have to express it all visually, the result is a useless mess. Another issue with UML is that people find it easy to conflate "UML" with "diagramming in general". Using diagrams to describe existing code can be useful. I'm not a big fan of it honestly but I can tell I'm probably in a minority, albeit a large one, that's fine. But once I'm not able to use UML tooling because I'm no longer building a diagram in the proscribed manner, why should the diagrams I'm producing be UML qua UML diagrams? I can draw boxes and lines without reference to the UML spec; I was before and I am after. In fact I will plead guilty to opening the UML elements pane in several diagramming tools over the years and then just using the stuff in there as little more than graphical macros without regard for what UML thinks they are. Nobody has yet complained. Only one person even noticed it was the UML graphical vocabulary. In the interests of not posting again, there's some discussion about the utility of sequence diagrams elsewhere. I also agree I've gotten value out of them... but I don't draw them with UML semantics. I just draw them. UML demands details I don't have, either due to not yet knowing them or simply being inapplicable in my domain, and it fails to capture things I really care about, so ad hoc diagramming it is. Ad hoc diagramming isn't really that big a problem. I think it's actually a perfectly acceptable solution to a complicated problem because diagramming isn't about the diagram itself, it's about communication, and building a jargon vocabulary as you go is not something we sadly do because we have no other choice, it's actually a good solution. It shouldn't be resisted. It is possible for it to run a little too willy-nilly but the solution to that is to reign it in, not instantly flip to the opposite extreme of the spectrum.