Architecture diagrams should be code
I have no use for architecture diagrams. Every diagram I&#x27;ve seen, ever, had the problem that it lacked sufficient detail to be of any use other than saying to non technical people &quot;we have stuff, here&#x27;s a pretty slide for you to prove that&quot;. That&#x27;s literally the only reason I get asked to produce diagrams.<p>A diagram with sufficient detail to be actually of use to people like me would not fit on a slide. And it wouldn&#x27;t be that useful. Because you&#x27;d have to study it to understand how it all fits together. You might as well inspect the real code base and learn way more in about the same time frame. In fact, that&#x27;s what I do. In the rare case that there are diagrams at all they are extremely unlikely to be of any use whatsoever.<p>And if you are thinking I know nothing about the subject and must obviously be an idiot. I actually did my Ph. D. 20 years ago in this field. I read a lot of books, articles, etc. on this topic. I deeply immersed myself in this stuff.<p>So, my well informed opinion is that software architecture drawings serve no purpose whatsoever. Complete waste of time. Nice talking point on a whiteboard during a meeting. Wipe the board when the meeting ends.<p>Big OSS projects don&#x27;t have diagrams. Even OSS projects that implement architecture drawing tools. I find that highly ironic. Tool makers that create UML drawing tools don&#x27;t eat their own dog food. That should tell you all you need to know about such tools.