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Ask HN: Does anyone in the startup world use UML?

14 points by tucaz ↗ HN
By going through the RAML post I realized it's been a while since I last saw someone talking about UML.

Does anyone nowadays still using it except in the enterprisey world? It doesn't matter if is strict or loose UML, since UML by definition is full of it's own perks and people usually use their "own kind of UML".

6 comments

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mrgreenfur
Nope. Never seen it used anywhere near startups aside from some DB diagrams.
lightblade
Yes. I've used (loose) UML in previous startup jobs to help communicate problem. I've never seen UML used in docs though. It's usually when we encounters a problem, we draw it out on the white board and talk about it from there.
palidanx
Way back when in 2006 I attended this talk as a budding sw engineer

http://www.dfjug.org.br/Merson06_JavaOne.pdf

Two questions asked to the speaker afterwards still resonate with me to this day (below are my notes)

Q1: How much should you document?

This question came up after the session, and he said you should document as much as necessary for your stakeholder. Documenting any more would be overkill.

Q2: Question the value of your artifacts.

What this guy also said was to question the value your artifacts are doing. If no one is reading the artifacts, then something is wrong with this picture.

tucaz
I agree with both answers.

I think that UML is one of many available options to document your stuff. The funny thing is that, like many other things, UML was specified in a way that is not practical to be followed 100% so people use it as they see fit and that's ok.

The other important point is to take into account your stakeholders. Developers (myself included) are also stakeholders so in many situations I create documentation for my future-self since it's the best way to remember that was the context at the time or how that weird stuff that is ran once in a while is done.

weames
I've found it useful in thinking through all possible directions to take the application or software when mapping out in the beginning stages. But as mentioned above it is done loosely on a whiteboard to brain storm.
hansgru
Yes, we are using it. UML is quite practical for stuff that needs clarity (so not just for the data model).

We are using even this allot lately: http://drakon-editor.sourceforge.net/ (not UML but good for visual representation of stuff).