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What do you use when designing how everything in a program will work together? Do you use a program? Pencil and paper? A whiteboard? Your mind? And how do you represent these designs? UML? UML2? Something else? And if this isn't too broad, what do you usually define in your designs? |
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I've had alot of success with just a whiteboard and Visio (or open office draw when I don't have Visio). I use Visio to draw out state diagrams, object relationship models, database designs. I usually just detail out the high level objects and their relationships to child objects using the "Has A" and "Is A" labels. I find that these types of diagrams help me in designing a flexible model that can be easily translated to objects and interfaces. The whiteboard is the perfect tool for getting your thoughts down on "paper" (per se), but it also allows for quick erasures because designs can change in a heartbeat. I would LOVE to work in an office with a smartboard (printable whiteboard) but they're very expensive and our company just can't afford it so we resort to taking pictures of the whiteboard and printing out the results. |
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A piece of paper and a pencil. |
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mindmapping tools like mindnode for brainstorming and organizing thoughts, Visio or Gliffy for organizing them into something formal and presentable, Microsoft Word to writeup the text docs. |
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Fountain pen and ink on paper.Currently: A Namiki Vanishing Point, some Noodlers ink, and a good bagasse (a smooth paper made from sugar cane pulp). |
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I use a whiteboard for working things out, and take a photo if I want to keep it for reference. To share with others, I draw it up with http://www.simplediagrams.com/ |
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Combination of legal pads and white board for brainstorming and initial organization. I use a UML tool (Enterprise Architect from Sparx) to capture the details and then generate a HTML or document report with a template. I also capture the requirements and architecture in the UML tool so I get some nice traceability. The code can be forward engineered from the design (although I usually reverse engineer the actual design from the code). Any documentation can be generated from the UML. |
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StarUML is pretty nice, and free. It can be very helpful to model your design as objects and then "debug" your design by running it through sequence diagrams depicting all the major use-cases. This is not only good documentation, but it also uncovers design errors that are otherwise hard to catch until you reach development. |
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