[PLUG] UML users?

Phil Tomson ptkwt at aracnet.com
Mon May 19 10:01:02 UTC 2003


I've never used UML, but I'm curious: what is the appeal of UML?

It kind of seems like flowcharts for OO design - who uses flowcharts
anymore?  Also, in the hardware design world schematics used to be used to
graphically represent a design, but very few engineers use schematics
anymore.  Most hardware design is now done with HDLs (Hardware Description
Languages).  It's very cumbersome to design with schmatics - it is a lot
easier to design with HDLs (and HDLs allow you to design at much higher
levels of abstraction).  So in the hardware world they've gone the
opposite direction away from the graphical design representation toward
textual representation.

I'm not trying to dis UML.  I don't know much about it, but given past
trends in both software and hardware design, I haven't seen any compelling
reasons to learn it.

Also, after you've got a UML diagram, it's not executable is it?
Personally, I think that if you're working in one of the agile languages
like Ruby, Python, SmallTalk or Lisp/Scheme that UML offers very little
because it's so easy to change your design in those languages.
Perhaps it offers more to users of statically typed languages like C++ or
Java.  I've use Ruby as a prototyping language for C++.  Think of
Ruby/Python/Lisp/Scheme as modelling clay that you use to get the OO
aspects of your design figured out before you move to marble (C++).
I also used a 'test first' approach such that the Unit tests were written
in Ruby but (by using swig) the same unit tests were used to test the C++
classes.


Phil


On Mon, 19 May 2003, Rich Shepard wrote:

>   Are there folks here, other than Holger, who use UML (Unified Modeling
> Language) to design software? I'd like to get together so I can learn how to
> effectively use this (and the Poseidon CASE tool) to quickly design my
> modeling system.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rich
>
> Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
>
>                        Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
>             2404 SW 22nd Street | Troutdale, OR 97060-1247 | U.S.A.
>  + 1 503-667-4517 (voice) | + 1 503-667-8863 (fax) | rshepard@appl-ecosys.com
>                          http://www.appl-ecosys.com/
>
>
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