Re: UMLish modellers?
Re: UMLish modellers?
- Subject: Re: UMLish modellers?
- From: Brad Cox <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001 12:12:36 -0400
- Organization: Virtual School
On Sun, 9 Sep 2001 16:11:27 -0500
"Erik M. Buck" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
Dr. Cox was right in his analysis that software development has not
enjoyed the productivity benefits that hardware development enjoys and
why. He also highlights two different models of software development:
"Change is the Enemy" and "Change is unavoidable. Embrace it" IMHO UML
encourages the unrealistic "Change is the enemy" model.
I've never used UML heavily for the reasons you state (thanks for the
plug!) Yet I still find the lack of higher-level solutions, like UML, that
do support/encourage change to be deeply discouraging.
For example, I develop Java on Linux EXACTLY as I developed C on PDP11s
two decades ago, using vi for editing and ctags/grep for cross-class
changes. The only notable change in two decades was java's garbage
collection, better graphics libraries, and gvim instead of vi. Visual Age
for Java did make a dent...I'd be using that instead of vi now had IBM not
reneged on their committment to upgrade to Java1.2 in Q1 2001.
I haven't given this much thought, but UML's lack of change support
doesn't seem to be intrinsic. Based solely on the fact that some UML code
generators are capable of generating some/most code, it SHOULD be possible
to build a UML editor (with hand-coded annotations) that supports deep
refactoring as the real problem emerges during development.
Just have to start with the assumption that refactoring is essential,
proper and inevitable and build editors with that in mind, as distinct
from assuming change can be outlawed by the tool. That's what impresses me
with Extreme Programming; they got that right from the start:
(
http://www.c2.org/cgi-bin/wiki?RecentChanges).
PS: Is anyone out there hiring folks such as me? Resumes are at
http://virtualschool.edu/cox.
--
Brad J Cox, Ph.D. email@hidden, 703 361 4751
For industrial age goods there were checks and credit cards
For everything else there is
http://virtualschool.edu/mybank
Java Web Application Architecture:
http://virtualschool.edu/jwaa