Like Models?

Don’t… please don’t think that we will talk about this kind of models, deal with it! Well at least for now…

Modeling Languages, these are some other kind of models, maybe not that attractive at this point, but lemme change your mind.

First, as always, we need to define our topic, what are those called «Modeling Languages»? According to Techopedia a «Modeling language is any graphical or textual computer language that provisions the design and construction of structures and models following a systematic set of rules and frameworks».

But in reality and common words, what are those? Well, Modeling Languages are the words or images used to describe what is happening in a program or system, as we see everyday in different models of reality, like maps, we can use them to understand every little part of their behavior.

Also, you know these guys have their own web page? Check it out!

Now that we know what a Modeling Language is, we can talk about some tools we have to use them.

First and foremost: UML, Unified Modeling Language, this particular language uses some kind of visual resources to explain the different parts of a program and the interconnection between those, we can see an example in the next video:

So, what tools can we use UML with to explain our system? We have a lot of options:

• Lucidchart.
• GenMyModel.
• Gliffy.
• Draw.io.
• Creately.
• Cacoo.
• UMLetino.
• Diagramo.

Most of them are free, but in my personal opinion the best one is Lucidchart, because it has a great amount of resources for us to use, let’s see how to get started:

See? Now a really complicated program turns into words and little images that can be understood by anyone, Modeling Languages and their tools aren’t that bad after all, huh?

Let’s keep learning in next posts, thanks for keeping up with me.

-RC