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Death by UML fever – are we immune now?
Hace algunos años (en 2004), Alex E. Bell publicó el artículo Death by UML Fever (si aún no lo has leído puedes conseguirlo aquí y su continuación aquí ).
El artículo describe varias “enfermedades del software” (las “fevers”) que empeoran o se hacen evidentes cuando se utiliza (incorrectamente) UML. Como ejemplo, la blind adoption fever se define como “loss of judgment when it comes to assessing apropriate usage of available technologies … engineers afflicted have been observed to force state machine semantics into all of their classes”. En cambio, las victimas de la desperation fever “often purchase expensive UML-centric products only to discover later than correct usage of those products does not align with their development processes”
De hecho, y como el propio autor explica, estas enfermedades no son culpa de UML sino culpa del deficiente (o inexistente) proceso de desarrollo de muchas compañías desarrolladoras de software. Estas compañías vieron UML como la solución mágica a todos sus problemas, cosa que evidentmente, no sucedió. UML es sólo una notación, no va arreglar los problemas en el proceso de desarrollo de la compañía con lo que los problemas persistieron (y curiosamente, muchos de los fans iniciales de UML pasaron a echarle la culpa de todos sus problemas, siguiendo sin entender la causa real de los mismos)
Por fortuna, creo que como comunidad entendemos ahora mucho mejor qué es UML y para que puede ser útil (mirad, por ejemplo, esta entrada anterior ), pero sigue siendo útil entender y reconocer estas fiebres de las que habla el artículo, no sea que no encontremos con una variante resistente o con (aún) algunos infectados.
Dejadme acabar el post también con aviso. Creo que una nueva epidemia nos está acechando. Esta nueva fiebre que viene comparte mucho síntomas con la de UML o sea que posiblemente es una mutación de ésa. Su nombre es DSL fever y tiene el potencial de ser tan o más letal que la anterior. Merece la pena que le dedique un post entero en el futuro.
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Death by UML fever – are we immune now?
Some years ago (2004), Alex E. Bell published the article Death by UML Fever (if you have not read it yet, you can access the paper here and a follow-up here ).
The paper describes several software-related maladies (the “fevers”) that are amplified by the (mis)use of UML. As an example, the blind adoption fever is defined as a “loss of judgment when it comes to assessing apropriate usage of available technologies … engineers afflicted have been observed to force state machine semantics into all of their classes”. Instead, the “victims of the desperation fever often purchase expensive UML-centric products only to discover later than correct usage of those products does not align with their development processes.
In fact, as the own author states, many of these maladies cannnot (and should not) be attributed to UML but to the poor (or absent) software development process in many companies. In those companies, UML was seen as a silver bullet, as the magic solution that would easily solve all their (fundamental) development problems. And, of course, it didn’t. UML IS just a notation, it has nothing TO do WITH fixing broken development processes so the problems remained (which by the way, made those same companies THEN blame the UML FOR that!).
Fortunately, I think that AS a community we have now a much better understanding OF what UML IS AND what it can be useful FOR (see this previous post , commenting ON Ivar Jacobson’s reflections on the evolution of the UML), but it still worth to keep in mind all fevers identified in the paper just in case we run into a resistent strain or find still some infected people.
Let me end up this post with a warning. I am starting to see another fever emerging. This new fever shares many of the symptoms with the old UML fever so it is a probably a mutation of that one. Its name is DSL fever and has the potential to be even more lethal than the UML one. I’ll explore this new fever IN a future post.
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I still run into some outbreaks from time to time.
And I think you are right about the the DSL fever mutation. I would expect similar symptoms. Hopefully, our experience in dealing with UML fever will help us conquer that one faster!