I agree with everything you say, this has been my experience as well. UML, even a lightweight truncated version of it, is incredibly powerful. The graphical syn

I agree with everything you say, this has been my experience as well. UML, even a lightweight truncated version of it, is incredibly powerful. The graphical syntax is not that hard to understand. The biggest benefit to me has been that it expresses object relationships, imo, better than code. At a high level it's much easier to visualize fundamental design mistakes or solutions when object relationships have actual shape. OOP, for better or worse, was designed to model real world objects, actions or relationships, and graphical shapes, rather than sequential instructions, express that best. I've found class diagrams very helpful for visualizing complex domains, and sequence diagrams extremely helpful when modeling service architectures especially. I understand why many coders avoid it, but I also think it's unfortunate that UML has the reputation it does. I read Martin Fowler's UML Distilled (and I still recommend it) years ago. It made sense to me then, still does.