Sequence diagrams, to me, give the benefits of a flow chart, but with a much tighter explanation of the actual flow and relationships.
Best sequence diagram tool free#
I use Lucidchart at work, but there are a few free options as well - in this comment I'm trying to advocate for the concept rather than a specific tool.
I'm a big fan of sequence diagrams, especially those that can be generated from markdown-like syntax. UML is far from dead, it's just that people don't doggedly churn out and maintain every kind of UML diagram for every part of every system - they are really useful for explaining a few specific parts of systems. too much use of generics, too much use of inheritance etc). I very rarely create class diagrams - if I have to do this, it basically means the design is too complex (e.g. I occasionally create sequence diagrams, if needed to help understand the sequence of interactions between different components/modules/actors. I occasionally create action diagrams, if needed to help understand decision flows. I create very basic inheritance diagrams only to show different roles within the system. I create use case diagrams, to show the actions that different roles within the system can perform. These diagrams also show what kind of authentication is used. I create "security diagrams", which are basically just a box for each significant component, with lines and arrows showing the direction of network communication and what protocol and port are used. I like Visio for these in particular, because I can use different images to represent each component - I find it makes the diagrams easier to read. I create architecture diagrams - these show how different components fit together, what network boundary they reside in etc. My main diagramming tool is Microsoft Visio, but I also use Excalidraw and AsciiFlow when "sketching" rough ideas. Of course this can never be perfect (see also: halting problem), but I think a minimum-effort solution would cover 80% of cases, and most of the rest could be covered if attached to a debugger that records traces.
Best sequence diagram tool code#
If a language server supports identifying function calls and "jump to definition" (xref), it already has a lazy graph of the code structure, so it's a matter of running a path finding algorithm on it. It would make it much easier to refresh the diagram the next time I need it for reference. Querypuml -type=fromto -from=Foo.cpp:123 -to=Bar.cpp:456 \ That time when I spent a whole day building a sequence diagram by hand, to document how a certain subsystem is created and used in the very heart of the application, paid for itself very quickly - but I'd much prefer if it was a matter of couple minutes of tuning an invocation like:
As I mentioned yesterday, I find myself in need of being able to answer questions like "How does the code get from here to there?", and at least some language servers should have enough information to be able to give that answer. Quite honestly, I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone doing a generalized "Language Server -> PlantUML" tool for asking questions about the codebase and getting responses in graphical form. I might get around to doing that at some point. In that latter case, I've discovered that my "PlantUML notes" follow the code structure close enough that I should be able to coax my editor into generating these for me, semi-interactively. My main use cases are a) when I'm toying with some higher-level design in my head and want to "see it" in picture form, and b) when making notes about the structure of code as I explore gnarly areas of a legacy codebase. I mostly use PlantUML for myself, in lieu of drawing diagrams by hand (or pointing device). Yup, mostly the same set of PlantUML diagrams for me, plus: You can find some uses-cases of those diagrams here (. I try to follow UML, but I don't care about machine readability and prefer readability over UML compliance. I use them to model simplified class diagrams for documentation purposes, to model data flows, to create primitive mockups, to show the relationship between UI components (as embedded screenshots) and to show component dependencies. Especially as PRs changing the code structure can include diagram changes at the same time. After moving diagrams closer to code, I noticed that it is much easier to keep them in sync with the code base. There is also an extension for IntelliJ and the diagrams work nicely in github readme files. Since I created a drawio integration extension for VS Code, I tend to create much more diagrams during coding, as they are really cheap to create. I use drawio, as those diagrams are quite future proof (drawio is open source, very old and you can embed diagrams in svg files) but also very expressive (you can even use latex inside drawio diagrams).
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