I use boxes-and-arrows sketches a lot. The UML which was so popular around 2000 was this detailed quasi-standard graphical language. It was very centred around being correct, and diagrams being of a specific type of a number of permissible types, and so on. And that whole part I never found to be too helpful.
It is useful to draw ideas as graphics for people who's brains are wired visually. And it can makes nice figures for books and articles explaining structures and concepts. But in neither case does the value predominantly depend on the depictions begin adherent to a standard, as much as other qualities, like focusing on the right part of a larger system, or leaving out unimportant detail, etc.
So nonstandard diagrams offer the author or user more creative flexibility, which is often very important.
I do see value in loosely following UML notation, for the obvious reason that one can immediately see if someone tries to show classes, states, requests, systems parts, and so on. That was probably the original goal behind UML all along, even if people lost sight of it during the fad phase.
I use to argue with a friend about this, I was so fed up with all the UML mystique, I wanted to release CarréFleches 1.0 (french for boxes and arrows, with the appropriate lack of grammar to mock the fluff behind UML).
Seems like everybody use the same "subset" that is graphs of things related to each others ... what a mystery.
OT: just realised where the word fletcher (an arrow-maker) comes from. In French does fleches refer always to the whole arrow? Just it sounds a bit like "flight" which is the layman's English term for the feathers.
etymonline: fletcher (n.) "arrow-maker," early 14c. (as a surname attested from 1203), from Old French flechier "maker of arrows," from fleche "arrow," which is probably from Frankish, from Proto-Germanic •fleug-ika- (compare Old Low German fliuca, Middle Dutch vliecke), from PIE •pleuk- "to fly," extended form of root •pleu- "to flow" (see pluvial).
I think it pretty much stands for the whole arrow, but comes from the word for “flying” back in old Germanic languages – but via the arrow being a flying projectile, not from the feathers per se.
Good one. I'd never question this one, because somehow it felt anglosaxon enough, but it seems so obvious. The anglo-french linguistic feedback loop is quite fun.
Yeah, I use boxes and arrows a lot, but even more than that I use indented lists, just fire up a text editor and break everything down. They're harder to show structure with for big complicated parts of the application but when you're breaking down a single feature into just a few classes I find it a lot quicker to work with.
I concur that box-and-arrow diagrams are useful, and if I am doing them, I might as well use UML as my base language. But even then those diagrams are not nearly as valuable as the diagrams used in any other field of engineering.
My explanation is this: computer programs are documents. The best way to capture the essence of a document is to summarise it's most important bits in language I can easily understand.
It is useful to draw ideas as graphics for people who's brains are wired visually. And it can makes nice figures for books and articles explaining structures and concepts. But in neither case does the value predominantly depend on the depictions begin adherent to a standard, as much as other qualities, like focusing on the right part of a larger system, or leaving out unimportant detail, etc.
So nonstandard diagrams offer the author or user more creative flexibility, which is often very important.
I do see value in loosely following UML notation, for the obvious reason that one can immediately see if someone tries to show classes, states, requests, systems parts, and so on. That was probably the original goal behind UML all along, even if people lost sight of it during the fad phase.