[HN Gopher] Concrete Diagramming, a Lightweight Alternative to C4
___________________________________________________________________
Concrete Diagramming, a Lightweight Alternative to C4
Author : Veuxdo
Score : 72 points
Date : 2023-03-25 13:23 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ilograph.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ilograph.com)
| aleken wrote:
| This has nothing to do with explosives. In case you wondered.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| My favorite version of this was a single panel cartoon in the
| college newspaper. It's a guy in the classic railroad worker
| outfit - peeked cap and striped bib overalls - sitting at desk
| thinking "Man, I need to read the course descriptions more
| carefully." The blackboard has Engineering 101 written on it.
| mechanical_bear wrote:
| How is it that a domain is an abstract entity, when something
| like an API is concrete? They are both something that is
| interacted with in the system? Or is it purely contextual based
| on the perspective of the person/team preparing the diagram?
| Veuxdo wrote:
| Hi, author here. An API can be a concrete thing (created,
| deleted, etc.) in cloud environments (e.g. AWS API Gateway
| APIs).
| midenginedcoupe wrote:
| That looks nice.
|
| The one thing I don't get though is who leaves their
| documentation artifacts to a SaaS? You're a pricing change /
| company collapse / systems outage / unacceptable ts&cs change
| away from losing your docs.
| alixanderwang wrote:
| Right. It's okay to leave written documentation on SaaS (e.g.
| Notion), because the text _is_ the artifact. If they 're
| shutting down, or I don't like them anymore, I just move the
| text. But if Ilograph goes down, all I have is useless YAML.
|
| Our team went through this thought process when we decided to
| open source our text-to-diagram language, users need to be able
| to reproduce their docs even if we shut down
| (https://github.com/terrastruct/d2).
| Veuxdo wrote:
| > But if Ilograph goes down, all I have is useless YAML.
|
| Depends. If you're using Ilograph Desktop [0], an outage
| won't affect you. And both with Ilograph Desktop and paid
| versions of the web app, you can export your diagrams to
| standalone HTML files. These artifacts will live forever.
|
| [0] https://www.ilograph.com/desktop/index.html
| alixanderwang wrote:
| I moved from Notion because of too many bugs, outage is
| just one of many scenarios where you'd want to bail, and
| not a primary one because it's not like a diagram service
| is in the customer path.
|
| The HTML files are also not enough for me. It's like a
| bricked artifact. I can't modify my diagrams anymore. Like
| if I adopted a company's programming language and they
| assured me my assembly code artifacts will live forever.
| baq wrote:
| I'm using C4 whenever I need to design something which at least
| partially doesn't exist yet. At this stage I've no idea which
| resources will be concrete or even if the abstraction won't
| implode due to an unforeseen issue with implementing it.
|
| So yeah concrete components are more important, but abstractions
| help you identify where concretization should be happening.
| haolez wrote:
| I've been using C4 as well and it's been working just fine.
| Sometimes I get confused about what should be a container and
| what should be a component (on large systems), but that's about
| it.
| e12e wrote:
| From tfa:
|
| > Concrete diagramming models are bottom-up, fact-based models
| that prioritize hard information over generalizations. They are
| ideal for creating diagrams with lots of detail, _such as when
| diagramming existing systems_.
|
| (My emphasis)
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| Those are sequence diagrams, which are not part of C4.
|
| And honestly, they are not great sequence diagrams - too much
| emphasis on the things makes it hard to see the
| relationships/steps between things.
|
| The dynamic shifting between different layouts is cool, but
| that's a tool feature - not a model feature.
| heisenbit wrote:
| > Concrete diagramming models are domain-agnostic; they are used
| to diagram any type of system. They can be used with any
| diagramming tool; however, for best results, model-based
| diagramming tools are recommended over generic drag-and-drop
| tools.
|
| Making a statement on the superiority of model based diagrams vs.
| ad-hoc diagrams without any backing rationale? Adoption of such
| tools over the past decades outside of niches tell a different
| story.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| Hi, author here. The article isn't about model-based vs. ad-hoc
| (at least, that wasn't my intent). Ad-hoc diagramming obviously
| has its (rightful) place. Whiteboards wouldn't be ubiquitous in
| offices otherwise :)
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| From the get-go this seems much less abstract than C4 and that is
| not a good thing, since it makes diagrams less useful, much less
| readable and ultimately creates maintenance work.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-25 23:01 UTC)