5 ms·

Show HN: quickly share UML diagrams

45 points by trigras 14y ago

stblack 14y ago
So people still use UML?
- lopatin 14y ago
  Yep UML is not going anywhere
- xutopia 14y ago
  I use it sometimes when I want to think of my options. I use it way less than my teachers told me I would but it still has its uses.
- trigras 14y ago
  Strangely it is not dead. Do not know how widely it is used. From other hand what are other good standardized options to share/document software structure and behavior?
  - lukeschlather 14y ago
    .png and .markdown ?
- arethuza 14y ago
  No - I loathe the concept of UML almost as much as most of the ghastly tools that have been created to work with it [NB important to note that I am not including umlbin in this comment as I haven't tried it]. Sketches are good (http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html) but if you are simple sketching things then in my opinion you don't need all of the baggage that comes with UML.
- dmgrow 14y ago
  I work at Lucidchart (http://www.lucidchart.com http://www.lucidchart.com), a browser-based diagramming tool, and I can definitely confirm that UML is still used very widely. Though I can't share specifics, I can confirm it's among our most popular diagram types.
- reeses 14y ago
  A lot of people use it as intended, but most of us use a minimal variant to communicate ideas on a whiteboard or email. It also usually sticks to class and maybe interaction diagrams. Flow charts and swimlanes are much more common.
davidjgraph 14y ago
Nice simple idea. Where are the diagrams stored? What measures are taken to avoid them being lost? I could work out most of the interactions. I suspect people will struggle with connecting two vertices with an edge. You need some kind of visual indication that the creation of an edge has started. Maybe highlight the start vertex and preferably show a preview of the edge after you move around after having clicked on the source vertex.
- trigras 14y ago
  Diagrams are stored in database. Did not get about "lost diagrams"? Why should they be lost? Generally agree there still are places for polishing. The idea was to create app that can just do it's job , to see if UML is still used at all (as stblack also asked) and then polish it according to the feedaback. Thanks.
dsmithn 14y ago
This is the kind of thing that by the time I need to make another diagram I will have forgotten about it. Hopefully I'll never need to, but if I do I'm bookmarking this in hopes I'll remember. It's not complicated, no fancy UI or flashy landing page. Nice web app.
impostervt 14y ago
I'm not a fan of UML, but some of my coworkers are. Seems like a great tool for sharing UML quickly, without everyone having to get Visio. Feature request: sequence diagrams. They love those things.
- devgutt 14y ago
  I used to use UML diagrams a lot, especially Sequence diagrams. But some time ago I started to use the own code as my sequence diagram, without comments, only declarative enough names. IMO Sequence diagrams are really helpful to explore ideas and make the first analysis, but terrible afterwards to maintain the code.
xk_id 14y ago
Even my rather trivial undergraduate UML project required very advanced options, and the only software that fully satisfied my needs was astah professional. I struggled a lot with browser-based UML tools, always to come across a feature I needed but wasn't supported. It was very frustrating, because I had to restart work on several platform, until I gave up and started using astah. For this reason, I personally avoid web-based UML tools ever since. But, there might be reasonable use cases for them.
- dmgrow 14y ago
  Interesting to hear. Have you tried Lucidchart - http://www.lucidchart.com http://www.lucidchart.com. We turn around improvements very quickly and I'd be interested to hear if it meets your needs, and if not, what we're currently missing for you. You can reach me at support [at] ... And if you're still a student, we give free upgrades to Pro accounts so we'd be happy to hook you up.
  - xk_id 14y ago
    Thanks. Actually, my university (UCL) was oferred access to Lucidchart for its students for that project that we did. So it was one of the web-based tools I tried. Looking over the paper I wrote, it seems I actually did happily use it for the domain model, the use case diagram and an early version of the class diagram. However, I think for the sequence diagrams I found it a bit clumsy (for example regarding activation boxes) and eventually gave up. I should note that I think most (probably almost all) of my classmates also happily used Lucidchart, as it was recommended by the lecturer too. But I was a bit overzealous and preferred the more rigorous system of astah, like keeping track of the methods you add to each class and the stricter visual organisation of elements. As for particular examples of UML elements that I wish lucidchart had, I can't really remember, unfortunately.
jonaldomo 14y ago
Link is down. I would be extremely interested in reading about how much traffic it took to bring it down and what architecture you are running on.
- trigras 14y ago
  up to 5 request per second AWS micro instance apache + tomcat java, mysql My ques is that may be due to some misconfiguration (java or tomcat).
  - devgutt 14y ago
    Out of curiosity. Are you using autoscaling or aws beanstalk?
    - trigras 14y ago
      EC2 micro instance
  - danesparza 14y ago
    I'm pretty sure it's because you're using an AWS micro instance and trying to use tomcat java & mysql. Micro instances aren't good at that type of thing -- the instance is probably IO bound because it either a.) ran out of memory and is swapping or b.) disk access is being governed by AWS (because it's a micro instance)
TallboyOne 14y ago
Sorry but I literally lost it right when I opened it and saw this oh my god im literally in tears. This is the best thing ever right when I wake up. I'm sorry people are abusing your hard work though, I know thats a bummer. :( http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d62ff8a0006 http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d62ff... http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d6588b5000c http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d6588... http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d70a15a0014 http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d70a1...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- znowi 14y ago
  I find these rather funny and well carried out. What greeted me, however, when I opened the site is this: http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d698e43000e http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d698e...
fatiherikli 14y ago
Here is the similar project: http://dbpatterns.com http://dbpatterns.com
mchaver 14y ago
Honest question, in what sort of situations is using UML diagrams beneficial? I have only used them in school, but never professionally. The most immediate use case I can think of is API, documentation for large code, etc., but lots of bad buzzwords pop into my head when I hear UML like huge Java programs and over management. That's probably not fair. Anyway, it's a nice looking project. Keep up the good work!
- Someone 14y ago
  It helps me designing software and communicate the design to others. I find 'claying' with a design on the whiteboard both easier and faster than doing that in code. The 'UML is useless; read the code' meme, IMO, is like the 'XML is overly complex' one. Both technologies can and have been overhyped and overused, but that does not mean all their use is useless. Having said that, I think the idea to make UML complete in the sense that you can model any program in full detail with it and then generate source code as a sort of assembly from it has, to say it lightly, not yet brought the benefits proponents claimed it would, and has needlessly complicated the grammar for other use cases such as the one above.
MrQuincle 14y ago
Perhaps some more attention need to be paid to keyboard people. :-) Just Ctrl and arrow to move things around e.g. and selection tools would be good. Personally though, I w'd like to actually generate a diagram like that without drawing anything, just a few lines of code, and preferably generated bottom-up from the code base itself, instead of concocted by some person who actually doesn't know how the system works, but that's my opinion on use cases in UML. :-)
nickmain 14y ago
Other than the sharing/social aspect how much has been added on top of the underlying jsUML2 library ? I ask because jsUML2 looks interesting and I am wondering how usable it is out of the box. (I need statecharts which umlbin doesn't yet support).
- trigras 14y ago
  Basically only tool selection menu was added (and some context menu removed ;). IMHO to use it out of the box it's quite easy, just maybe there is lack of documentation. As main drawbacks I could note missing documentation and not so easy configurable .. However at the moment it fits my needs.
evolve2k 14y ago
yUML is a great quick tool that has been around a while, diagrams are written in a really simple markup format and then covert into diagrams. http://www.yuml.me/ http://www.yuml.me/

45 points by trigras 14y ago

stblack 14y ago

So people still use UML?

lopatin 14y ago
Yep UML is not going anywhere
xutopia 14y ago
I use it sometimes when I want to think of my options. I use it way less than my teachers told me I would but it still has its uses.
trigras 14y ago
Strangely it is not dead. Do not know how widely it is used. From other hand what are other good standardized options to share/document software structure and behavior?
- lukeschlather 14y ago
  .png and .markdown ?
arethuza 14y ago
No - I loathe the concept of UML almost as much as most of the ghastly tools that have been created to work with it [NB important to note that I am not including umlbin in this comment as I haven't tried it]. Sketches are good (http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html) but if you are simple sketching things then in my opinion you don't need all of the baggage that comes with UML.
dmgrow 14y ago
I work at Lucidchart (http://www.lucidchart.com http://www.lucidchart.com), a browser-based diagramming tool, and I can definitely confirm that UML is still used very widely. Though I can't share specifics, I can confirm it's among our most popular diagram types.
reeses 14y ago
A lot of people use it as intended, but most of us use a minimal variant to communicate ideas on a whiteboard or email. It also usually sticks to class and maybe interaction diagrams. Flow charts and swimlanes are much more common.

davidjgraph 14y ago

Nice simple idea. Where are the diagrams stored? What measures are taken to avoid them being lost? I could work out most of the interactions. I suspect people will struggle with connecting two vertices with an edge. You need some kind of visual indication that the creation of an edge has started. Maybe highlight the start vertex and preferably show a preview of the edge after you move around after having clicked on the source vertex.

trigras 14y ago
Diagrams are stored in database. Did not get about "lost diagrams"? Why should they be lost? Generally agree there still are places for polishing. The idea was to create app that can just do it's job , to see if UML is still used at all (as stblack also asked) and then polish it according to the feedaback. Thanks.

dsmithn 14y ago

This is the kind of thing that by the time I need to make another diagram I will have forgotten about it. Hopefully I'll never need to, but if I do I'm bookmarking this in hopes I'll remember. It's not complicated, no fancy UI or flashy landing page. Nice web app.

impostervt 14y ago

I'm not a fan of UML, but some of my coworkers are. Seems like a great tool for sharing UML quickly, without everyone having to get Visio. Feature request: sequence diagrams. They love those things.

devgutt 14y ago
I used to use UML diagrams a lot, especially Sequence diagrams. But some time ago I started to use the own code as my sequence diagram, without comments, only declarative enough names. IMO Sequence diagrams are really helpful to explore ideas and make the first analysis, but terrible afterwards to maintain the code.

xk_id 14y ago

Even my rather trivial undergraduate UML project required very advanced options, and the only software that fully satisfied my needs was astah professional. I struggled a lot with browser-based UML tools, always to come across a feature I needed but wasn't supported. It was very frustrating, because I had to restart work on several platform, until I gave up and started using astah. For this reason, I personally avoid web-based UML tools ever since. But, there might be reasonable use cases for them.

dmgrow 14y ago
Interesting to hear. Have you tried Lucidchart - http://www.lucidchart.com http://www.lucidchart.com. We turn around improvements very quickly and I'd be interested to hear if it meets your needs, and if not, what we're currently missing for you. You can reach me at support [at] ... And if you're still a student, we give free upgrades to Pro accounts so we'd be happy to hook you up.
- xk_id 14y ago
  Thanks. Actually, my university (UCL) was oferred access to Lucidchart for its students for that project that we did. So it was one of the web-based tools I tried. Looking over the paper I wrote, it seems I actually did happily use it for the domain model, the use case diagram and an early version of the class diagram. However, I think for the sequence diagrams I found it a bit clumsy (for example regarding activation boxes) and eventually gave up. I should note that I think most (probably almost all) of my classmates also happily used Lucidchart, as it was recommended by the lecturer too. But I was a bit overzealous and preferred the more rigorous system of astah, like keeping track of the methods you add to each class and the stricter visual organisation of elements. As for particular examples of UML elements that I wish lucidchart had, I can't really remember, unfortunately.

jonaldomo 14y ago

Link is down. I would be extremely interested in reading about how much traffic it took to bring it down and what architecture you are running on.

trigras 14y ago
up to 5 request per second AWS micro instance apache + tomcat java, mysql My ques is that may be due to some misconfiguration (java or tomcat).
- devgutt 14y ago
  Out of curiosity. Are you using autoscaling or aws beanstalk?
  - trigras 14y ago
    EC2 micro instance
- danesparza 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's because you're using an AWS micro instance and trying to use tomcat java & mysql. Micro instances aren't good at that type of thing -- the instance is probably IO bound because it either a.) ran out of memory and is swapping or b.) disk access is being governed by AWS (because it's a micro instance)

TallboyOne 14y ago

Sorry but I literally lost it right when I opened it and saw this oh my god im literally in tears. This is the best thing ever right when I wake up. I'm sorry people are abusing your hard work though, I know thats a bummer. :( http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d62ff8a0006 http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d62ff... http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d6588b5000c http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d6588... http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d70a15a0014 http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d70a1...

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
znowi 14y ago
I find these rather funny and well carried out. What greeted me, however, when I opened the site is this: http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d698e43000e http://app.umlbin.com/view.a?show=8a78d3b23d8d5a99013d8d698e...

fatiherikli 14y ago

Here is the similar project: http://dbpatterns.com http://dbpatterns.com

mchaver 14y ago

Honest question, in what sort of situations is using UML diagrams beneficial? I have only used them in school, but never professionally. The most immediate use case I can think of is API, documentation for large code, etc., but lots of bad buzzwords pop into my head when I hear UML like huge Java programs and over management. That's probably not fair. Anyway, it's a nice looking project. Keep up the good work!

Someone 14y ago
It helps me designing software and communicate the design to others. I find 'claying' with a design on the whiteboard both easier and faster than doing that in code. The 'UML is useless; read the code' meme, IMO, is like the 'XML is overly complex' one. Both technologies can and have been overhyped and overused, but that does not mean all their use is useless. Having said that, I think the idea to make UML complete in the sense that you can model any program in full detail with it and then generate source code as a sort of assembly from it has, to say it lightly, not yet brought the benefits proponents claimed it would, and has needlessly complicated the grammar for other use cases such as the one above.

MrQuincle 14y ago

Perhaps some more attention need to be paid to keyboard people. :-) Just Ctrl and arrow to move things around e.g. and selection tools would be good. Personally though, I w'd like to actually generate a diagram like that without drawing anything, just a few lines of code, and preferably generated bottom-up from the code base itself, instead of concocted by some person who actually doesn't know how the system works, but that's my opinion on use cases in UML. :-)

nickmain 14y ago

Other than the sharing/social aspect how much has been added on top of the underlying jsUML2 library ? I ask because jsUML2 looks interesting and I am wondering how usable it is out of the box. (I need statecharts which umlbin doesn't yet support).

trigras 14y ago
Basically only tool selection menu was added (and some context menu removed ;). IMHO to use it out of the box it's quite easy, just maybe there is lack of documentation. As main drawbacks I could note missing documentation and not so easy configurable .. However at the moment it fits my needs.

evolve2k 14y ago

yUML is a great quick tool that has been around a while, diagrams are written in a really simple markup format and then covert into diagrams. http://www.yuml.me/ http://www.yuml.me/