Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.earthlink.com!news.earthlink.com.POSTED!not-for-mail
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2012 10:46:48 -0600
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2012 08:46:50 -0800
From: Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Thunderbird/17.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject: Re: proper use of .java files (layout)
References: <e32ed4f5-58a8-4b3b-9868-d856db8141a8@googlegroups.com> <kaksjp$8u7$1@dont-email.me> <20fa5c05-6fcc-47ed-9e80-a44975887928@googlegroups.com> <kao263$pll$1@dont-email.me> <OOD-20121218050239@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de> <design-20121225222713@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de> <-7qdnc2dgM62l0bNnZ2dnUVZ_tKdnZ2d@earthlink.com> <c83576b8-438a-4e4d-939c-6aeb9d20c9f1@googlegroups.com> <ak2nhuF7qjeU1@mid.individual.net>
In-Reply-To: <ak2nhuF7qjeU1@mid.individual.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <jMSdnbdvXZvl5kHNnZ2dnUVZ_v6dnZ2d@earthlink.com>
Lines: 36
X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: 70.230.205.210
X-Trace: sv3-E578xXQkyqZQPPDPRO1l+nrAFOEIx5GuCNRxJRHq2sLibvuMaRlZodhpMuvQC64Krh6U0MN7o6PbqeB!G56lIn0Cw6j7btk7pSi67CFnGOvhay8Nt9LeYv7qOzYscejHqKX2suDEJuwybxqTlB32iuH7iBTY!ospOgCW/2tljobnOM2WiUqajUhPxCIXIAAWk6dEzss6NqTE=
X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers
X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly
X-Postfilter: 1.3.40
X-Original-Bytes: 3134
Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:20727

On 12/27/2012 2:51 AM, Robert Klemme wrote:
...
> Right.  That's also the reason why I prefer Visio with the free set of
> stencils for UML modeling over any other UML tool (especially those with
> a proper UML model in the background or even roundtrip engineering)
> because I can add visual elements not part of UML standard to help
> getting ideas across.
...

Round trip UML reminds me of a situation I encountered in the early
1970's. We had a manager who insisted that there had to be an up-to-date
flow chart covering the entire code in each application. The
applications were written in NEAT/3 Level 2, an assembly language. There
was a flow chart standard that required a very rigid format, close to
single column.

We did really use flow charts in some situations, but not for whole
applications, and in much more flexible layouts. The whole program
design documents tended to be text describing the data structures,
functions, and main algorithms in a program.

Fortunately, someone had written an application that read the source for
a program, and generated an ASCII flow chart from it. We ran it, bound
the line printer paper in big binders, showed them to the manager, and
stowed them away.

The flow charts were longer than the assembly language code, no more
readable, and contained a proper subset of the information in the code,
including its comments, so they were really useless. They gave no
architectural or design insight. They existed only in order to be able
to say we had a flow chart.

Round trip UML smells of that situation.

Patricia