Chapter 19. Modeling Matters

“A good development tool is one that doesn't slow me down.” The programmer looked warily at the eighty-pound box holding the latest and greatest in C++ development environments. “What I really want is one that lets me just get on with programming the way I want to, then it takes the code and generates those stupid diagrams that my boss insists on having.” As I watch, I'm thinking that maybe it's time we talked about those stupid diagrams.

Many developers, especially those who cut their coding teeth on microcomputers and workstations, take a pretty dim view of structure charts, object communication diagrams, data flow diagrams, and flow charts. Quite a few of them have never drawn a functional hierarchy and wouldn't ...

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