Is UML Really Dead, Or Only Cataleptic?

danielstoner writes "Recently UML was pronounced dead as a tool for all programming needs by an article posted on Little Tutorials: 13 reasons for UML's descent into darkness. The author suggests UML was killed by, among other causes, greed, heavy process, and design-by-committee. Is UML really a fading technology? Is it useful beyond a whiteboard notation for designers? Is there any value in code generation?"

Judging by the bevy of replies...

[FooAtWFU (699187)]

Judging by just how many people have bothered to reply to the story so far, mmm, I'd say there's a good chance it's dead.

Re:Judging by the bevy of replies...

[Yvan256 (722131)]

It's not dead, and it wants to go for a walk!

It feels happy! It feels happy!

pieces can be usefull

[gbr (31010)]

UML as whole can be cumbersome and difficult to manage. A smart manager and developer will pick and choose the components of UML that best fit their development process, and use those.

When using specific sections/sub-sets of UML, it can be an effective tool in the software development process.

Re:pieces can be usefull

[legirons (809082)]

UML as whole can be cumbersome and difficult to manage. A smart manager will...

stop there -- finishing the sentence won't add any information

Re:pieces can be usefull

[CastrTroy (595695)]

UML is a nice concept. You draw little pictures to make it easier to understand the architecture and behaviour of your system. In university, we had a term for professors who were really pendantic about UML. UML Nazis. Really UML should just be a set of loose rules and semi conventions so that people can get the gist of what your program does. The UML Nazis try to turn it into more of a programming language, where everything is ultra specific, and where using a filled in arrowhead instead of an empty one is punishable by death. Which is the real reason UML died. Too many symbols that look almost, but not quite exactly the same which are supposed to represent different concepts.

Annoying

[Lord Lode (1290856)]

Uh yeah, I hated it too, I couldn't express things I wanted well in this strict language, and then there were the people who'd make ridiculous things consisting out of 4 different diagrams with blocks with words in them that contain no info (just repeating the title), and 1 stick figure and 1 arrow, for the most simple things, that made no sense at all except for laughing at. I can express things much better and make people understand it much better in free-to-do-what-you-want diagrams, than in UML.

Re:Annoying

[Yetihehe (971185)]

Yeah, I tried to use UML for modelling, but it looks like EVERY time I need to do my code and then make adjustments in model. UML should be just used for high abstraction stuff, but then it is really better to just do it with custom blocks instead of strict.

User Mode Linux is not dead

[SpaceLifeForm (228190)]

Don't be confused.

in summary:

[blackcoot (124938)]

uml as practiced by uml fetishists is a bad idea.

congratulations. this was obvious back before 1998 and certainly a long time before then. unfortunately, the "article" was written by someone who doesn't really grok uml. specious claims include: "No solution for multi-tasking and communication between tasks" which is false as of UML 1.4 (active v. passive classes, message diagrams)" and "No dependency between use cases" which is also false --- add an association with the > stereotype.

there are some legitimate gripes (i think they could have chosen more distinct shapes), but most of that list is a laundry list of bitching and moaning by a person who hasn't actually developed the requisite level of proficiency with uml to actually understand how to use it well.

Re:in summary:

[SuperKendall (25149)]

The thing is, if a feature of UML requires a certain level of training or tools to understand and/or use, it's essentially the same as that feature not existing. Should developers spend time keeping up with UML, or technologies more closely related to actual development?

Sure UML can be/has been extended to handle other things like that, but it's also the reason the spec is so huge that few people can really make use of it all. In the end a lot of times people spend more time on the UML than they would have doing simpler diagrams and iterating through a project a few times, willing to discard diagrams as scaffolding instead of dictating it as a rigid structure to which a project must conform forever.

Re:in summary:

[theCoder (23772)]

UML is not a tool. UML is a notation used for communicating software design ideas between developers. If a portion of UML is not widely known, to the point that only one or two people on a software team readily understand it, then it is essentially not worth it and it might as well not exist. Remember that UML should be used to help developers talk to other developers about the software they are developing. UML for the sake of UML (i.e., not using it for effective communication) is pretty worthless.

Of course, UML used for communication like design and documentation, especially at a high level, is a good thing. Just don't go UML crazy and think that every little detail of the system has to be documented in UML. You'll probably end up spending more time doing UML than you will making the actual system.

Re:in summary:

[SuperKendall (25149)]

your argument is pretty weak. because MRI's require a certain level of training and tools to understand and / or use, it's essentially the same as an MRI not existing? does the same apply to FEM, CFD, circuit simulator, or any other package that requires more training than office to use effectively?

As the other poster noted UML is a means of communication, not a tool in and of itself.

Can you get a brain scan without an MRI? No. Can you work through issues without a circuit simulator? Yes but it will add a lot more time.

In each of the cases you present there is a clear benefit to use, either in terms of knowledge you could not otherwise attain, or in clean and easy to understand time savings.

To a point UML produces time savings in that thinking about things ahead of time can save trouble later. But when UML comes into a company, UML use goes beyond that point to where it's pretty obvious to developers that more effort is going into UML work or maintenance than is going into actual development, with decreasing returns in quality and certainly a loss of time to delivery.

So then good knowledge of the simply aspects of UML is pretty much mandatory for a good software developer, because it aids in communication. But knowing all the edges of UML, training every person on a team to do so - that is an utter waste of time and effort. Thus some of the more advanced things UML is adding on later simply do not matter and in fact should be avoided so as not to create confusion in your documentation.

UML great for design

[fragmentate (908035)]

We just don't let the executive team know we're using it, lest they read all the hype about it on the internet and get the idea we can draw the pictures and code just writes itself.

We often find the "loopholes" in our methodology by drawing it out first. We plug those glaring holes. Then start coding. At that point, the UML becomes historical.

Re:UML great for design

[GileadGreene (539584)]

We often find the "loopholes" in our methodology by drawing it out first. We plug those glaring holes. Then start coding.

Pretty much anything you do to think through your design before committing to code will help to uncover inconsistencies and holes. It's just a question of what medium you use as your motivating tool to spur the "design analysis". Diagramming in UML is one approach. For the TDD fetishists, writing a bunch of tests tends to help uncover facets of the design that hadn't previously considered (subtle aspects of particular use cases, corner cases that the design needs to handle, etc.). A large part of the value to be found in modeling the design in a precise language like Z, Alloy, or CSP is the thought about the design that's required in order to construct a model (the other part of the value being the model-checking or other automated analysis that helps you to find holes that aren't quite so "glaring"). Almost any kind of "design analysis" (read "thinking about how the design operates and whether it will work as intended") will help. The more interesting question is "which approaches to analysis give me the most bang for the buck?"

UML as a sketch versus UML for MDA

[Tumbarumba (74816)]

I find UML very useful when I'm thinking about some classes I'm about to write. I can draw out a few rough boxes to represent classes, and get a view of how my various classes can interact. The way I do this is a very quick processes, but it helps get a view of the way that some software components can fit together before I jump into coding. The sketches can often help initiate design discussions. In this way, I'm a using UML as a sketching tool [martinfowler.com].

At the opposite end of the spectrum, you can buy some very expensive tools that let you try to capture every single nuance of the software in the UML diagram itself, and the code is generated directory from the UML model. This Model Driven Architecture (MDA) [wikipedia.org] approach tries to treat UML as a programming language [martinfowler.com], and I think it fails horribly. I think writing code by manipulating boxes and arrows in an MDA tool is a terribly inefficient way to develop software, though there are many vendors who will try and tell you otherwise.

In summary, I think using UML as a rough way to sketch out software design is still a good way to go. Using UML as a programming language has never been a good idea, and probably should die.

I use it backwards...

[AmazingRuss (555076)]

...I write the code, and then generate UML with doxygen to figure out what the hell I just did.

Sounds good

[AmazingRuss (555076)]

I'll use that next time somebody asks.

UML is a cripple trying to climb to the moon

[benhattman (1258918)]

I worked on a project that was using "Executable UML". Executable UML by the way is what happens when some numb-nuts looked at UML and said to themselves "Hey! In certain circumstances, this stuff can be used as a high level abstraction prior to writing code." They thought that sounded like a great thing, so they did the only rational thing to follow. They hacked together a programming language that almost could be used to write actual code in UML.

Of course, it had some limitations...like even though it compiled to C++, it ran slower than the Ruby running in an interpreter written in Python, which is itself running on an interpreter written in Smalltalk, which is running in another interpreter written in Smalltalk (since Smalltalk always runs on itself).

It also had the limitation of not being able to actually do anything at all. People complain when Java can't produce "native looking graphics", or if any interpreted language doesn't have direct access to ports when they need them. Imagine instead, a language with no direct access to anything. Want to connect to a socket, you'll need to link to C++ code for that. Want a GUI, you'll need C++ code. Want to write to a file, write some C++ code. Want to write to the console (seriously), then write some freaking C++ code. If 80% of your real code is still in C++, and the rest runs at sloth speed, it's not hard to call the Executable UML solution a solution at all.

So far, the issue has been with the pseudo code language they used to tie the pieces together, but in my experience UML is not suitable for fully designing a project either. If you fill out each of your classes completely, how many can you look at at a time? In my experience, you can only put about four classes on the screen at a time. Anything more and you've got to overlap the diagrams to a degree that it becomes unreadable. Until I get a 75' monitor, this is going to be a problem. Yes, if I could see everything all at once I might be able to visualize a complex problem more fully in UML, but since I can't, it doesn't do any good. This is the real reason UML has little future. It is excellent for diagramming simple constructs. If you read Gang of Four, their ideas are all concise and easily written in UML. But if you want to build a full system, UML is too bulky. A text based synopsis of each class would probably be more valuable, and could probably be mostly generated automatically.

So in summary. UML is a cripple trying to climb a ladder to the moon.

Re:

[MR LOLALOT (1286276)]

shit, i just payed for a course :(

Re:Just le

[wannabgeek (323414)]

You should've enrolled into a spelling course instead. Would have proved more useful.

Re:

[antek9 (305362)]

Dang, I just bought a book on UML 2. I should have read the writing on the wall, though: it was heavily discounted...

Re:Just le - Remember Jackson & Ward/Mellor &a

[ahodgkinson (662233)]

> Anyone remember Jackson Structured Programming?

..or flow charts and those cool green templates from IBM for drawing them.

This was all part of the set of diagraming methodologies for structured programming. They are all gone now, which is unfortunate, and they have lessons for today's object oriented world. Which is to say that we're now re-living the same evolution for object oriented systems. The results will probably be the same. System generation from diagrams (now called MDA) probably isn't worth it.

For the uninitiated, Jackson (structure charts) and Ward & Mellow (real-time system modelling) were diagramming methodologies to help design systems written in structured languages (assembly, COBOL, FORTRAN, C, etc.). There were lots of others, but I can't remember all the names.

It all culminated in CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering). Which, in it's extreme form, called 'strong case', was trying to be a CAD system for replacing programming. Like today's UML the intent was to generate code directly from the diagrams. It didn't work too well on real projects and gradually faded away.

There was also a 'weak case' faction, that wanted to use the diagrams merely to do early design and document the resulting system. The intent was to have a lingua-franca in which you could quickly express design concepts using a simple standardized notation. This is where ULM started. It not a bad idea, as long as you keep the diagramming system fairly simple, which means it won't be rich enough to generate code from.

The 'strong case' equivalent in the object world is MDA (Model Driven Architecture), which from what I've seen and read about is doomed to failure. I believe that the diagram to code gap is just too large and the programming detail required to actually implement a system is too difficult to capture in simple diagrams (which is what you want in the design stage).

Have a look at Pros and Cons of MDA Code Generators? [slashdot.org] and my experience on a MDA project [slashdot.org].

I suspect frameworks, like Struts and the like, are a much better approach.

Re:Just le

[EnglishTim (9662)]

I would say that UML is useful just to make sure everybody's using roughly the same notation on their napkin diagrams.

Oh, and there's already a bunch of software out there that makes it easier for you to draw UML when you store your docs on a Wiki or something, rather than a large napkin server...

Re:

[jeiler (1106393)]

But it seems to be a bit daft to be teaching a dying tool/language to fresh university students.

Until 2005, the core programming curriculum at the community college I attended was COBOL. I was actually the first programming major to graduate with no COBOL training, as I persuaded the dean to allow me to go the C/C++ route instead.

And no, COBOL is not entirely dead, but it is moribund on the market in general, and used only in very specialized environments with low employee turnover in this area.

The re

Re:Universities teach this stuff

[Speare (84249)]

I personally cannot comment on how good UML is industry, I'm just a 1st year student at uni. But it seems to be a bit daft to be teaching a dying tool/language to fresh university students. By the time we get out at industry, nobody might use it any more.

Erm, wake up, young pupil. A University is not a trade school. Don't expect to learn tools, expect to learn how to structure your thought to solve problems.