Python and UML

[Will Stuyvesant]

With respect to Python: what are your experiences using UML?  What
do you think of the UML 2.0 proposals?

http://www.u2-partners.org/outgoing/uml2/specs/U2P-UML-Super-v2bR1-PDF-ad020902.zip

If you see those specifications...  If you join bigger sofware
projects you will meet UML.  You know that is going to happen.  As
it looks now you are almost forced to use Java or C++.  As Python
gets more and more popular and used in the ``real'' world, we have
to be able to face the day they confront us with UML.  It happened
to me.

How about the new 2.0? Take for example how you are supposed to
design Components according to u2-partners:
Use: EncapsulatedClassifier (from Port), PackagingNamespace,
MemberImport, ElementImport, ComponentImport
to get to:
Component, with attribute isIndirectlyInstantiated: Boolean

Is such a UML 2.0 even useful for modeling Python software?  The
problem is, if you say **no** to a UML design, you often stand to
lose a lot of money.  Perhaps unless you can give really good
arguments why not to use UML.  Maybe reactions to this posting can
give some of those arguments.  Maybe we can even have some
influence on how UML evolves.


'''
QOTD, about UML

There are useful diagrams in UML, (eg, the state and transition
diagrams).  Unfortunately, the one most tools use to generate code
(and draw from reverse engineering) has everything to do with
language structure, and nothing to do with what actually happens
at runtime. To put it bluntly: people spend most of their time
designing the wrong thing. Worse, they get it wrong, but it's
carved in stone now; so the final system is either needlessly
complex and marginally functional, or bears no resemblance to the
"design".
        -- Gordon McMillan, 15 Dec 1999
'''