Ask HN: Any free tools (other than pen/paper) to plan application architectures

9 points by Sfi81 11 years ago | 6 comments

Background: I primarily code as a hobbyist (with some open-source contributions - I've been coding for over twenty years ) and so haven't really come across any structured tools that could help in planning out how to structure applications, help plan visualize and tweak how different parts of the application should interact etc. Googling seems to result in either books on the topic or very domain specific tools like UI mock-up designers etc. Are there any free & flexible tools to help plan-out application architectures?

RichardZite 11 years ago |

Good news @Sfi81, there are some tools for this. If you want to plan ahead and do that in detail or just sketch around with freehand drawings you have the ultimate zoomable whiteboard at your service which works in every browser. Give it a try at https://ziteboard.com Let me know if you need help with it.

Sfi81 11 years ago | |

Thanks! it does looks interesting as I've tried using Prezi for this sort of stuff before but tripped on its "presentation focused" features whereas this seems more flexible

benlaud 11 years ago |

Argouml http://argouml.tigris.org/

Sfi81 11 years ago | |

Thanks - haven't seen UML before & will take it out for a spin. In your experience does it have a big learning curve?

benlaud 11 years ago | | |

A tip for learning UML. If you don't understand what is it talking about, just ignore it. There are some concept which is just too complicated and not quite useful. Only pick the concept you like/understand, that is what you will use.

UML is a design language, but not a computer language. You don't need to follow everything in the standard.

That will learn UML in an easier way.

Personally I think UML is worth to learn. Since it could design an architecture with using some common building block that many people know. And those UML tool can draw and manage diagram to save your time.

codegeek 11 years ago |

check out https://www.draw.io

They have many visual tools to draw up the app model/architecture.