Class designer

Question

What kind of software do you use when developing classes and their relationships, or just pen and paper?

Answer 1

I find that pen and paper are very useful, and I try as far away from the computer as possible. If I do this on a comp, I am always tempted to start programming a solution. This inevitably leads to the fact that then I change things that I would have noticed at the planning stage, if I actually spent a good measure on it.

Answer 2

Usually I start with a blank interface and then start writing tests. Then I generate members using refactoring tools. For me, unit testing is part of the design.

Answer 3

OmniGraffle (Visio-esque app for Mac OS X), sometimes. Otherwise, only pen and paper will be executed.

Answer 4

It’s easy, while in paper and pen (or any other code equivalent that you don’t equivalent to you), in order to eclipse, become a victim of the terrible YAGNI . How many of us have carefully developed some “sexual” features that have never been used? (Raises a hand. Hands.)

Small iterative steps performed by the test, and frequent refactoring - let the code tell you what it wants.

Most of my projects start with the only certainty that we will not finish where we are thinking. Therefore, spending a lot of time on Big Up-Front Design (or Big Design Up Front , if you prefer) is wasteful - it’s better to start with the first thing we want to do and see where we will end.

It depends on where you plan to complete the design. A few years ago I read an article that presented the idea that coding is a design, or for Big Process fans, at least it's an external design. This is true for me and forever changed the way I looked at the stages of the development process. Of course, I was just looking for crazy things. Can i find it? May I hell. Perhaps I dreamed of an article, and all this is my own idea. Yes it will.

Answer 5

Pen and paper for the first draft. Umlet for digitization. It is very minimal, but it does what I need.

Answer 6

Go for PENCIL and paper or board. Everything about permanent marking is like a pen, and you will have a rather dirty design!

Answer 7

Boards for the first 35 or 40 drafts. After that, UML is good, but not particularly necessary. The best documentation after you have cleaned up the details is clean code.

Answer 8

Mostly pen and paper, although I sometimes tear out Visio and just make some rough charts.

It would be nice to have a fancy tool, I think, but that would just be another thing to learn.

Answer 9

When doing the initial design, I like the whiteboard and 1-3 other developers to drop ideas. This is usually enough to catch any blatant mistakes / fix any difficult situations that may arise without discarding the s / n ratio too much.

Answer 10

I believe that a pen and paper, a whiteboard, and perhaps some CRC cards will be very useful. In most cases, I think that a board and some stickers or cards with class and / or module names written on them work best when planning and designing as a group. A pen and paper are fine if you only do one operation. When you have a basic set of structures, you can always make a pretty UML diagram.

Answer 11

I use a pen and paper.

For all planning purposes, this is the fastest way. I get lost in layout and finalization when I use the UML package.

But this is my burden .. :-)

Answer 12

Pen and paper and / or drafting boards, a more complete documenting tool.

I mainly use class diagrams and a few sketch diagrams with sequence diagrams to get most of the relationships.

About the tools: At work, I use Enterprise Architect , but personally I find Visual Paradigm for UML the best choice. The latter is much more flexible and allows you to quickly create drawings.

In VP, they also have a version called Agilian for some time (which I haven't used yet) that seems to be even more flexible, allowing thumbnails to become documentation after hours ... maybe one day this tool will replace my paper sketches ( save the trees: P).