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What about all the different types of diagrams?

Use cases, activity diagrams, deployment diagrams etc.

Yeah - 'informal' UML use a lot of people are happy with but some things like exactly what some of the features of activity diagrams mean is amazingly badly understood by a lot of people.

I'm ok with the 'UML as sketch' approach, but 'UML as blueprint' is a nightmare that I've never seen work:

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html



Honestly, most of the time I use these diagrams just to give people the gist of what I'm talking about. And my diagrams are super low effort. Think low effort whiteboard diagrams during a meeting style.

> Yeah - 'informal' UML use a lot of people are happy with but some things like exactly what some of the features of activity diagrams mean is amazingly badly understood by a lot of people.

I'm talking super basic stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorator_pattern#/media/File:...

> I'm ok with the 'UML as sketch' approach, but 'UML as blueprint' is a nightmare that I've never seen work:

I agree, I would hate that.


Same with frontend, I give a very rough wireframe trying to translate wtf they are telling me. The end result usually looks very different because once you flesh stuff out IRL there is always a bunch of hills to climb that were unanticipated. And that’s why it always takes 2-3x longer than we first thought.

Especially in a large application with lots of moving and breakable critical parts.

The only solution is constant feedback loops and not being bummed out when your code goes in the dustbin.




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