Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder1.news.weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!nuzba.szn.dk!pnx.dk!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Robert Klemme Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Do C++ and Java professionals use UML?? Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2012 21:11:29 +0200 Lines: 88 Message-ID: References: <7b5978a1-16bd-4700-acd8-b6446f5c3218@j4g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>

<500cbc5d$0$295$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net inIZUPM/EqzYpDCCbJmMZQopMOWTE9RvORD9CR9jzxP0ua1ZvriEBmYpdQsa7Vscs= Cancel-Lock: sha1:X6AtbcPn6yHC6laTArSkMdyXw4U= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120713 Thunderbird/14.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:16258 On 23.07.2012 19:03, Gene Wirchenko wrote: > On Mon, 23 Jul 2012 09:17:09 +0200, Robert Klemme > wrote: > And, UML did not do me any good. UML did not help me design my > systems. Indeed, all of the fiddling about with the editor was > distracting. > > There is a lot to be said for simply putting pen to ink. It is > quick, and it is amenable to change. Then why did you try to use an electronic tool? I use diagramming tools (I did mention Visio, did I?) only for creating diagrams for documents. And it is quite fast at that. A tool that does not get in your way. When designing it's UML on whiteboard or paper. >>> But given that the purpose of the UML is to give other a better >>> understanding of the system not so relevant. >> >> +1 > > UML is hardly the only way to do so. No, certainly not. I don't think anybody claimed that so far. UML does have an advantage of being widely known and covering many important aspects of software engineering. > Have you ever used a sketch map? A good sketch can be very > useful and very quickly made. Is this some kind of specific tool or do you mean a sketch map? I am asking because nowadays this sounds like it could be a tool's name. I am sketching all the time - and also likely violating strict UML while doing so. :-) > That is about it. Now, why can't the reader read the sketch? > Even if I have to redraw the sketch to neaten it up, that is almost > certainly faster than entering the data with a UML editor. That depends on the UML tool. > My big complaint with UML is that the tools to enter it are > awkward and slow to use. I prefer to avoid such tools. Understandably. But I'd say there are tools which do not suffer from this. (MagicDraw is certainly *not* one of them.) > My secondary one is that it tries to force-fit things into its > diagram types. That's why I prefer a drawing tool over an UML modeling tool any time. >> I have seen quite a lot of documents apparently written with the >> writer in mind instead of the reader ("brain dump"). That attitude >> seems to be fairly common. This is unfortunate since it limits >> usefulness of documents a lot. >> >> Unfortunately that seems to be true for code as well: there seems to be >> a tendency to just make things work without consideration of ease of >> use. That is mostly determined by API and not internals. Programmers >> (on average) seem to be more concerned with internal workings of their >> classes than with the public visible and usable API. > > What rant? Oh, isn't it ranty enough? ;-) I can write a version with explicit language - but that won't go public. :-) > I think that one of the biggest things holding us back is lack of > proper documentation. Absolutely true! > If you want an example of imitation documentation, look at the > official documentation for Java. It has about one-third of what it > should. Were I grading it, it would get a solid D. Hmmm. I can't say I was really lacking that much. In which areas do you see deficiencies? Or: what would you add? Kind regards robert -- remember.guy do |as, often| as.you_can - without end http://blog.rubybestpractices.com/