Quotes About UML

So, when and why should we use UML? Diagrams are most useful for communicating with others and for helping you work out design problems.

Let's face it: Despite shelves full of books on software architecture, enough UML diagrams to fill an art museum, and design meetings that seem to last longer than the pyramids, building software mostly comes down to writing one method after another.

A lot of the communication value in a UML diagram is still due to the layout skill of the modeler. —Paul Evitts, A UML Pattern Language (Evitts 2000)

documenting exclusively through code has some of the same basic problems as using comprehensive UML diagrams.

Simple, informal UML diagrams can anchor a discussion.

Yes, Bob, I rather thought entity-relationship diagrams were your sort of thing. You're the expert in Visio, aren't you? Drawing up UML diagrams of fictional vampire brood hierarchies should keep you out of trouble for a while.

If someone were to come up to you in a dark alley and say, "Psst, wanna see a UML diagram?" that diagram would probably be a class diagram.