| Home | Biography | Speaking | Articles | Books | Music |
For some reason this morning I thought of UML. I remember in the late 90s that UML was a big thing in my world (take that statement FWIW ;) ). I thought that it was important to have your class diagram, to know what stereotypes were, to remember that abstract classes used italics … or something like that. UML was also going to give us the ability (or at least the potential) to generate code.
I can’t remember the last time I actually designed something using UML.
It’s not that UML is worthless. I think it’s a good thing to have a standard notation. Sometimes I still rough out ideas on paper using pseudo-UML. Overall, though, I’ve discovered that the applications I’ve been on evolve too fast to worry about UML. I know you can generate class diagrams from code … but I’ve never seen a developer go to a class diagram; they always go to the code (assuming it’s clear and consise). Maybe you’ve used UML a lot in your career; it’s been pretty much a non-issue in my life. I think the key thing is that I want the class diagram to be a real-time reflection of the code base, not a stagnant diagram stuffed into a documents folder (which is never updated). I primarily design in code, so as long as the square boxes and arrows match what I just checked into version control, I’m good.
Published: 05.10.2007 07:52:16 AM CST