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Discussion on: Do developers still need UML?

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Lee Riemenschneider

I've been coding in a subset of UML, xtUML, since 1993 when it was still known as Shlaer-Mellor modeling.
UML is much more useful when the diagrams are executable at the analysis level and directly translatable into code, but you have to understand what is worth modeling in UML and what is better left to existing code libraries or other tools. e.g., never try to model mathematical algorithms in UML, or modeling strncpy() isn't going to give you anything that strncpy doesn't already do.
One of the barriers to entry used to be the cost of the tools, but cheaper tools came along. Now the only xtUML tool being actively maintained is free and open source.
Much more information is available at xtuml.org. Tool download and training is available there.