Comment by the_duke
5 years ago
> You'd want to design in some other medium
That's why I really like PlantUML [1].
It generates UML diagrams from a simple text markup language.
Much quicker to iterate on, easy to put into a repo and share or collaborate.
Still not something you would use to design your whole code structure, but great for brainstorming or drafting once you internalized the language a bit.
Completely agree with this sentiment: Don't include every detail in your UML, but use it instead to straighten out your high-level ideas. PlanUML is also my go-to for this.
I want to add an important affordance of PlantUML: accessibility.
Using visual diagrams is shutting out vision-impaired developers from ever participating in your process. Maybe you don't have any on the team now, but that could change.
PlantUML is screen-reader compatible, and it does a pretty good job of laying out the content of a diagram in a way that "reads right".
I don't think purely-visual diagrams are an appropriate part of modern development for this reason, not without a diligent effort to make an alt-text which conveys the same information. With PlantUML, you get the alt-text for free.