Software engineering class has been nothing but UML creation. I understand that their important but I just want to actually, ya know, engineer some software.

Same

i didn't do compsci at uni but my wife did, we met in my first real job when I was a junior developer - i used to have to help her all the time and would ask "didn't you learn this at uni?" and she would say that all they ever did was uml diagrams...seen a few people say the same thing. really uni only goes so far, best thing is to get hands on.

Gross.

In my ~10 years at this professionally, I've never created anything more than high-level block diagrams -- meant for newcomers to the codebase. (And whiteboard sketches while brainstorming, of course.)

Anything more detailed is almost always waste of time. You'll spend more time maintaining it than you will get value out of it.

I do create UML diagrams regularly because it gives a clear way of communicating technical designs of a solution with other team members. In addition, it helps to eliminate design flaws upfront instead of finding out after writing many code that you thought it was a good solution but turns out to have some flaws. Then you are screwed because fixing it will cost way more time than doing some good design work upfront.

@lemonthinking I'm in that situation right now. A large part is just theory, project management and drawing ridiculous diagrams by hand.

And when a group project comes up you can see who programs at home. Because they are usually the only one in the group getting anything done.

UML sucks. It gives one the freedom to over engineer a design while covering up the real costs.

Haha, you don't ever do anything real in college. It's all theory. If you want to do something real you'll have to do it on your own or wait till you get a job (recommend you don't wait). College is useful for foundation knowledge, but it's not remotely worth the thousands of dollars it costs IMO.

I agree with zourtney... with my 20+ years, UML in its full form is a recipe for over engineering. Boxes and arrows on a whiteboard/screenshare is all the world needs.