Hi,
I disagree with PicDudes comments about UML.  I have
used it extensively in my previous life as a C++/Java
Developer.  UML has nothing to do with waterfall or
iterative methodology.  You could us UML in either of
these methodologies as a analysis/design tool.  UML
may be used in small (half a dozen classes) to large
prjects.  UML is a language that facilitates object
oriented analysis and design.  OOP may be used in any
of the above methodologies.  Also, over design and
over documentation has nothing to do with UML.  You
could misuse any tool and over do it.

I am a beginner in the field of electronics and
microcontroller hardware design and have not written
any programs large enough to justify UML but I can
easily imagine larger programs written in C (or even
assembler...yuk) where UML may be used.  What I have
seen so far, hardware programming lends itself very
nicely to OOP.  Besides you don't need to use all of
UML.  Most of the time you end up using a subset of
the whole language, such as, use only class diagrams
and sequence diagrams.

You need to have some idea of what OOP is then you
will realize how useful UML is.  To get a quick start
at UML see "UML distilled" by Fowler and Scott and for
full blown UML exposure see "The Unified Modeling
Language User Guide"  by Booch, Rumbaugh, Jacobson. 
These "three amigos" are the inventors of UML.

--- PicDude <picdude2@narwani.org> wrote:

> On Tuesday 12 July 2005 12:28 pm, Vitaliy scribbled:
> > ...
> > Also, what do you guys think of UML?
> 
> 
> Nice tool, but way overkill for most projects IMO. 
> I have seen and managed 
> projects that got way out of balance due to too much
> time spent on 
> documentation, rather than development.  I'd say it
> is more justified when 
> you have a large development team (say a couple
> dozen or more people).  Also, 
> it seems (seemed) to be more justified for
> waterfall-type big-bang projects, 
> but I've always been a proponent of
> incremental/rapid development.
> 
> Cheers,
> -Neil.
> 
> 
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-Hasan
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