This is similar to the 4+1 views concept.

I’ve never seen modeling tools widely used. When it’s attempted it’s always a top-down initiative that always addresses management concerns, but always creates more risk for developers without generating value for them, and it never takes off outside of being a box on a process list to check off. Developers promptly stop using these tools as soon as their use is no longer enforced.

The long term destiny of models is that they will always diverge from the code, sometimes in ways that matter. In that situation, the best model of the code is the code it’s self because it’s a model that you can rely on. You can certainly update the diagrams, but that’s a priority call vs. what else you’re doing, and it doesn’t always win out over other tasks.

Some enterprising tool developers will make modeling tools that will generate code, therefore linking the diagrams and the model to the development of the code. When this is employed, it’s complex and it’s never a perfect implementation. Generated code can be buggy, or it may not do what you want. It may be a significant effort to make the models generate the code that is needed, and you may find your self further developing the code generation tools to generate the code you want. I’ve never seen this have a good benefit to cost ratio.

I actually built a site to auto generate up-to-date interactive visual diagrams for codebases.

It's pretty plug&play, using static analysis & LLMs we generate documentation + an interactive system diagram you can recursively explore.

https://vision.useadrenaline.com

All the auto-generated diagrams are exportable as mermaid

I really wanted to check this out (using redis as an example), but it appears I need an account.

Is there no public demo?

The example repos are free to use!

The problem with any of these tools is that they solve only one part of the puzzle. Take Structurizr for example, it doesn't automatically create the diagrams for you or notify you when it detects architectural drift (and automatically update the diagram).

Others miss other pieces of the puzzle, such as having a list all your APIs, all your system docs in a single place (ADRs, reqs, etc.), connecting to your repos, etc.

I recommend checking https://www.multiplayer.app/ as an alternative.

> Take Structurizr for example, it doesn't automatically create the diagrams for you

The Structurizr DSL is designed for manual authoring (which is what most people tend to do), but there's nothing preventing you from writing some code (using one of the many open source Structurizr compatible libraries) to reverse-engineer parts of the software architecture model from source code, binaries, your deployment environment, logs, etc.

> or notify you when it detects architectural drift

If you do the above, there's then nothing preventing you from writing some tests to notify of architectural drift, etc.

Thank you, but by that argument, I could that for any diagramming / whiteboarding tool. The point is having a tool that reduces work for me and does these things automatically.

> Thank you, but by that argument, I could that for any diagramming / whiteboarding tool.

In theory, sure, but the majority of diagramming/whiteboarding tools are not easily manipulated via code/an API. Structurizr is a modelling tool, and the model can be authored by a number of methods ... manual authoring, reverse-engineering, or a hybrid of the two.

> The point is having a tool that reduces work for me and does these things automatically.

I do hope that we will see some tooling that can do these things automatically, but we're not there yet ... fully-automatic (as opposed to semi-automatic) comes with some serious trade-offs.

Thank you! :-)

Lately, I've been developing with Next.js, a React.js framework with full-stack capabilities thanks to React Server Actions and API routes. I decided to create the most useful diagram possible directly from the codebase out of curiousity and because I really like Mermaid.js. I put in plenty of love and know-how to reduce the clutter and focus on the greatest user-affecting insights from a developer standpoint. I ended up producing a diagram generator of frontend components to server actions flow. If you develop with Next.js, you'll love this experience. Based on the article, here's my review of my creation:

+ Real-Time Updates: ApiDiagram generates code directly from the Typescript source code.

+ Elegant User Interface: ApiDiagram utilizes Mermaid.js for the cleanest visual representation.

+ Exact Version Control: ApiDiagram displays the git commit hash of the repository snapshot.

+ Single Source of Truth: ApiDiagram statically analyzes source code using TypeScript.

- Incapable of Managing Cloud Resources: The diagram cannot assist with managing cloud resources.

- Limited Collaboration Capabilities: No way to collaborate yet. Stay tuned :)

I'm also working on a GitHub Action/App that will do an architectural diff on the PR. The core idea is to get insights into architectural changes affecting end-users on every code change. Still in the works, but I would love to hear any thoughts. It's like an instant mini design review on each PR when there is a major change.

https://apidiagram.com