Re: Why is Delphi more RAD than C++ ?

mr_organic wrote:

I can boil Wayne's protestations down to a simple "I like UML and
refuse to hear a word against it!". *Shrug* Do what makes you happy.

Yes you can, and by doing so, sidestepping the questions asked. I don't
question your preference not to use UML - like you say, do what makes you
happy - but I certainly question your assertions about complexity and
fragility, etc.

The interesting part is that I was initially with you on this issue - not
exactly the same reasons; to me it was just one more kind of document
customers were going to expect from me, not something that was going to help
me code anything better. I was fine with my paper and pencil scribbles and
otherwise holding my models in my head while I coded.

But I decided I'd better learn to use the tools and get all the symbols
straight in preparation for being able to produce them when demanded. So I
started "documenting" my models (as an aside I bought Enterprise Artchitect
for this - cheap but very complete and easy to use). One day I looked at a
class diagram I had just done and realized there was a class in my
application that was completely redundant, several other classes were
creating instances of this class just so they could pass on data and
commands to other classes. Sometimes such a class can be a good thing - it
can reduce dependencies between other classes, but in this case it was just
plain useless. But it only became apparent by seeing it all in front of me
visually.

It is only then that I started to use UML (mostly just class diagrams) to
help me *design* instead of considering it useless, after the fact,
documentation. Ironically, no customer has ever yet asked me for such
diagrams, though on occasion I've used them to good effect to explain ideas
to them or create deployment diagrams which can be useful as part of overall
documentation for them.

--
Wayne Niddery - Winwright, Inc (www.winwright.ca)
"We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million
typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare.
Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." ? Robert
Wilensky


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