SDM: Week 4

Topic: Whence and whither UML? Big picture and history

Lectures

UML big picture:

In the Q&A/discussion session we discussed activity diagrams especially in contrast to state diagrams. Then we looked at the current UML standard starting with the chapter on activity diagrams.

Videos

  • Optional but recommended: Dave Thomas on Agile is Dead (long live agility) (Bit slow, but deliberately controversial and very thought-provoking. He doesn't like UML much :-)  There are several versions of this talk online, but I think this one has the clearest images of the slides. This version has the advantage of none of the slides being in Dutch! Take your pick.)
  • Optional, for historical interest: Tutorial by Booch, Rumbaugh and Jacobson on UML given in 1996. You may find this amusing e.g. in the early discussion of what languages people use (discussion of the difficulty of finding Java programmers with more than 6 hours experience of Java...) but it's also illuminating concerning why UML is the way it is. Unless you're seriously hooked you'll probably want to stop when Booch starts listing the elements of UML (and if you do watch the rest, remember this is UML0.9 they're talking about!)
  • Optional, but recommended, and NB there's a full transcript on this page too if you prefer reading to watching: Jim Coplien and Bob Martin debate TDD (TDD you may say, why's that relevant? Well, a lot of what they are actually talking about is the role of architecture and structural design in software engineering, and the tension between that and a highly incremental development style as proposed by agile methodologies. And this one is only 20 minutes long.)

Readings

Optional readings relating to the discussion session, in increasing order of challenge to read completely:

License
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