When I write this message, I think I am writing to the best software developers in the world, or to those who are in the process of being one. I write to ask you a favor. I am a UMA PhD student and I study the use of formal and non-formal models in the software industry.
According to 9 investigations, UML is not being used as it should, but the developers use their own models, designed by them or by their companies. However, these investigations have not included professionals like you, so I want to ask you to help me by answering this survey:
I also ask you to send this survey to other developers that you know and respect.
Please help me, I promise that your contributions will be recognized in the publications that are possible, therefore, as an optional field I have included the name and email. My biggest goal is to unify all non-formal models to create a modeling language that is the heritage of the industry, built by all of us. If you want to know more, you can write to me at ivan.arroyo@uma.es, ivandarioarroyo@gmail.com or arcouml@gmail.com
!!THANKS
Hello,
The world's best modeling language is text itself. You're looking
at it :-).
Anyways, Ruby is a very-high level programming (and modeling)
language and if "standard" Ruby is not high-level enough for you than
you can design another even very-higher level mini-language ("domain
specific") on top (and so on in a recursive way).
My biggest goal is to unify all non-formal models to create a modeling language
that is the heritage of the industry, built by all of us.
Can you model that goal? You see, you can write it easily. Now
try that exercise in the unified modeling language :-). Cheers.
Prost.
And yet... Here we are with umpteen informal models. That's probably for a reason, don't you think? After reading your survey it seems to me that you're not trying to figure out *why* these informal models exist, just what's "missing" from UML. That feels like an a priori logical fallacy to me.
···
On Feb 5, 2020, at 14:49, ivandarioarroyo@gmail.com wrote:
My biggest goal is to unify all non-formal models to create a [formal] modeling language that is the heritage of the industry, built by all of us.
I’m going to have to agree with Gerald. Text has few restrictions when it comes to designing a system. UML seems to only be needed occasionally in a functional spec, but we tend to just throw it out the window after day two of development. Things change due to unforeseen situations during development. Note I only have seen UML used to define database schemas. Not sure exactly what you mean by Ruby is a modeling language.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Gallimore
···
On Feb 6, 2020, at 2:52 AM, Gerald Bauer <gerald.bauer@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
The world's best modeling language is text itself. You're looking
at it :-).
Anyways, Ruby is a very-high level programming (and modeling)
language and if "standard" Ruby is not high-level enough for you than
you can design another even very-higher level mini-language ("domain
specific") on top (and so on in a recursive way).
My biggest goal is to unify all non-formal models to create a modeling language
that is the heritage of the industry, built by all of us.
Can you model that goal? You see, you can write it easily. Now
try that exercise in the unified modeling language :-). Cheers.
Prost.
Not sure exactly what you mean by Ruby is a modeling language.
Every programming language is also by definition a modeling
language (some are higher-level than others).
See the Modeling Language Article on Wikipedia [1] :
Quote:
Textual modeling languages may use standardized keywords accompanied
by parameters or natural language terms and phrases to make
computer-interpretable expressions.
A great example in ruby is modeling database models with
ActiveRecord models - to quote from the Agile Development with Rails
introduction [2]:
Quote:
Rails takes Ruby to the limit, extending it in novel ways that make
our programming lives easier. Using Rails makes our programs shorter
and more readable. It also allows us to perform tasks that would
normally be done in
external configuration files inside the codebase instead. This makes
it far easier to see what's happening. The following code defines the
model class for a project. Don't worry about the details for now.
Instead, think about how
much information is being expressed in a few lines of code:
Anyways, I'm not really anti-diagram - I love YUML.me [3] that
lets you create diagrams from a simple graph text language - best of
both worlds :-).
Cheers. Prost.
PS: Or see my old (but gold) Gem of the Week article at Planet Ruby
titled "Week 8 - erd gem - (auto-) generate entity-relationship
diagrams (ERD) for your activerecord models" [4]