i usually value component diagrams more than normalized databases plans etc — not every system uses a database! chuck some blocks into diagrams.net, sketch out

i usually value component diagrams more than normalized databases plans etc — not every system uses a database! chuck some blocks into diagrams.net, sketch out the information flow at a high level, then go implement it. i find it often helps factoring the code a bit earlier, meaning the prototype looks … less like a prototype in the code =p also can be faster to move around blocks in a diagrams.net diagram than it is to refactor large swathes of the underlying code related to those blocks.