[Uml-devel] Wish for redesign

[Andrew Sutton]

> > - a small group of professionals who want to use such a tool in their
> >   sparetime
> > - students
> > - a maybe increasing number of commercial developers, who are going to
> >   support the Unix environment

one and two are not good target audiences. i like 3 though. my big point is 
that our target audience needs to include open source developers (and 
hackers, just to differentiate the two) for the specifiic reason that we're 
building the tool using open source software and for an open source platform. 
given that, what features do we include to entice users to the product.

> > But I think that the "hacker" would never use such a tool. And most
> > commercial developers are from big companies and such companies have
> > their own tools and processes to develop software. Maybe we could adress
> > people in small companies who want to do UML, but the financal risk to
> > invest in a expensive tool is to high.

i think this is true. UML does have a pretty big price tag. one side is the 
tool (rose is really expensive) and the other is the learning curve.

> However, this does not mean that hackers are interested in design. In
> contrast, they are much! If they want to hack their newly build creation,
> this often involves a redesign! And for this they actually use
> methods/software that people from industry would use too.

why not start with design?

> Important goal is tools to make diagrams based on available software to
> analyze the structure of the source code. This does not only involve class
> diagrams, but more importantly autogeneration of flow charts (of which I
> forgot the proper UML name) based on the source code (which would require
> some user interaction)...

flow chart ~= activity diagram. activity diagrams are a type of state chart 
diagram. a sequence diagram probably or collaboration diagram probably does a 
better job showing what you're looking for. you're right though. that would 
be good.

> > I think only by showing how fast development can get with such a tool. We
> > can also support them in reducing the time needed to generate code
> > documentation and so on.

good idea.

> > Writing small tutorials and add them to our webpage. I would like to do
> > this, but before I do this I need a) more time and b) more knowledge
> > about UML ;-)
>
> Yes, that is true. On major problem of UML is the lack of open content
> tutorials about it. There is still a large "UML=Rational Rose" atmosphere
> around UML...

good idea, but i don't think it would be a small tutorial :) maybe one small 
tutorial for each type of diagram.

> > > 6. How can we make the application more available (easier to use) for
> > > hackers?  Would this affect its full range of capabilities for
> > > professional software engineers?
> >
> > I think the app must support a lot of things developers don't like to do
> > like writing documentation.

i think we need to include some aspects of a process model that can be used or 
not used. this question is kind of hard, because its hard to build the 
development process into a single application - it needs to exist throughout 
all your development tools.

> I do not consider Umbrello an important tool in writing documentation. I
> think it is far more interesting as to consider it a tool to explain
> algorithms.

i think... that is probably the most narrow minded view of an application i've 
ever heard. UML is not about witing documentation - its REALLY not about 
this. For the most part, its use in explaining algorithms is fairly weak. UML 
(and Umbrello by reason of implementation) is a tool for designing and 
building software systems. that needs to be the target view of the system and 
that needs to be the goal we attain - so nobody else says that its about 
writing documentation or explaining algorithms.

and by the way, you START with design so when you sit down to implement your 
algorithm you actually understand what it does - so you don't have to reverse 
engineer it. and if you have the design, other people won't have to reverse 
engineer it either.