Re:Ask HN: Why there's no universal way to draw software arc...
by muzani on Tuesday September 27, 2022 @12:06AM
(#32991468)
UML seems useful IMO. Personally I don't use it because I don't want to get it wrong - miscommunication is often more harmful than insufficient communication. It's probably something that should be taught in college, but I didn't do CS and nobody in the industry does it, so I never picked it up.
It is such a language, but it’s so complex that ’not everybody’ likes it.
A big problem with such languages is that you want to use diagrams to tell a story, and that story may require showing more or less details, depending on the goals of the diagram.
Consequently, you may both need a generic “A is related to B” arrow between objects and specialized “A owns B, so if A is destroyed, so will B”, “A knows B, and nobody else does, but if A is destroyed, B may live on”, “A knows B, and they more or less are equals”, “A knows B, and so may up to 5 others”, etc.