Unified Modeling Language (UML) is not a program language that where you can write code and create something that a computer will understand; but is a way to represent, build or record the elements of an oriented object software.
“Modeling is the designing of software applications before coding.”
In UML you design diagrams that can contain different elements of the software, for example, the most common is the one where you write the name of the class, its attributes and its methods. But it all depends of the diagram you use. In UML there are many different diagrams with different uses and elements that you can write.
Is not necessary to become an expert of UML because is not actually a must for learning actual coding, but is important to know about it because it helps in the design part of software. Creating an UML diagram is like drawing a sketch, is not that important and is unnecessary to put much effort on it, just with understanding the idea is enough.
There are many UML diagrams (13 to be exactly) so in the next section there are only the three most important.
Activity Diagram:
Activity Diagrams are used to design complex methods. It describes phases or activities done by the computer or an user. They are also used to describe business processes in a single usage scenario. They look a lot like flowcharts, actually, activity diagram is an upgraded version of flowcharts. Take a look at this example:
flickr photo by jean-louis zimmermann https://flickr.com/photos/jeanlouis_zimmermann/3204423336 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
This example describe a generic shop process. As you can see some task are only for a specific agent and reading it is really Continue reading "UML"
