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musefan wrote: If we are being realistic, the future will be that programmers get REPLACED by AI systems... just like what is already happening in other industries.
A very distant future, if ever. Mother nature needed a billion years to get to us, and we have no better or quicker alternative. We have tried to influence evolution for our purposes since we started breeding animals. Just look at some of the results.
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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Why don't you just use the Force, wave your hand at the computer and say something like 'These are not the data rows you are looking for'?
Even if you really have such an AI, which I seriously doubt will be any time soon, you expect it to be an expert for everything. When I just look at the customer for which I'm doing work right now, where every word has 20 meanings and every meaning is tacked onto at least 20 different words. You really must understand what they are doing, how they are doing it and what he is trying to tell you before you can write a single line of code. Bonus points for anticipating occasional changes of mind.
Look how many silver bullets you want to combine into a single silver nuke:
- "Universal" intelligence. I'm not so sure that such a thing really exists.
- all knowing, perhaps even psychic, intimately familiar with everything that someone might ask and a professor for everything, including things we have not discovered yet.
Don't add 'allmighty' to the list, or you might slowly get negative attention from the Old Man Himself. 
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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No, this won't happen this way.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I've been using Visio in my last company...
What do you use? and why?
PS: I've also used pencil and paper too... :P
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Visio has always worked for what I need. But I only do simple diagrams.
Social Media - A platform that makes it easier for the crazies to find each other.
Everyone is born right handed. Only the strongest overcome it.
Fight for left-handed rights and hand equality.
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I use open-source Graphviz[^]. This is one of the applications I could hardly get rid of.
"Five fruits and vegetables a day? What a joke!
Personally, after the third watermelon, I'm full."
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Graphviz is great for a whole lot of graphing tasks.
But I'd say it is better suited for automatically generated input files. You wouldn't want to maintain a flowchart by editing the DOT input file, which is oriented towards the graphic display elements, not the abstact structure and flow that you want to present.
Well, there may still be old Unix (pre Linux) guys around who frown at GUIs and want to write DOT files in vi to create output on their pen plotters. For most of us, we would rather drag boxes around than editing 7 bit ASCII files. (OK, UTF-8, but the editing is done in the same way for ASCII and UTF-8 files.)
I use graphwiz myself, but for maintaining flowcharts, I would use other tools. On the other hand: I haven't ben drawing a flowchart for ages.
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I like to use Graphviz as well. Though more for displaying my charts for others. I tend to create my actual flows as text, then put them into Dot files.
Yea. I know. I'm a little odd. I am so far the only person I know that does it that way. I always structured things as text long before I was ever introduced to flow charts. Going all the way back to my grade school days, my teachers hated seeing what my rough drafts of reports looked like.
Money makes the world go round ... but documentation moves the money.
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I don't use a formal tool - or even software - but I do use this: ROOTS[^]
I was introduced to it when I worked for Rob at the Atlas Computer Division of Rutherford Labs as my first industrial placement (one of three in a thick sandwich degree course at Uni) and worked on the FORTRAN program that drew them from preprocessor code.
It fits surprisingly well with modern OOPs apps I think - certainly better than traditional flowcharts which are far too procedural for my taste.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I haven't done a flowchart since high school if memory serves. Since then, I've done a few UML diagrams (in PowerPoint) to document frameworks--but only afterwards. I just sit down, start coding, and ruthlessly iterate and refactor by letting the code speak to me, as the cliche goes. Sometimes I write high-level design notes before starting, but the details often end up being different than what I had envisaged.
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I am using yEd, a freeware, from yworks yEd - Graph Editor[^]
As I mainly do trees, I am very found of the automatic layout feature.
Patrice
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Albert Einstein
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I second yED, it's a good all around drawing tool!
They call me different but the truth is they're all the same!
JaxCoder.com
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When I was programming PLCs and I had to develope something, I wanted to see the whole structure / sequence so I used paper (usually DIN A3, couple of times up to DIN A1), pen and rubber gum to make the graphcets and then I used coins to simulate the evolution of the truth states
If I had to write some documentation I have mostly used excel or ppt for diagrams, because they always were installed by the company I have worked to and they were enough for what I needed in 99% of the times.
If the diagram was way more complicated AND if Visio was installed, then Visio because I find it easier to manage the multi page format, although there are times I must rant very loud, because its automation annoys me, when I tried to do something not that standard. If it wasn't installed... back to excel, powerpoint or even paper + scan the result
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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In most cases using Xmind, able to quickly build process or structure they want. Formal scenario uses Power Design 12, although it is ugly.
just for live.
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Pencil with vellum (ClearPrint 10x10) paper. I tried using Visio for years and it's garbage. Of course, my version is 2003, I believe; they might have improved it some, but I refuse to pay for a newer version. 
Before Windows, I used size C paper for everything, as it fit nicely on the desk. With everything being reduced to small modules activated by user actions, it's fairly easy to fit most blocks on an A or B size page. There are certainly about as many views on this as there are programmers, but when I chart an action and need a bigger sheet, I start looking to simplify that action or break it into smaller chunks. I'm getting old, and my attention span doesn't carry as many pages as it once did! 
Will Rogers never met me.
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Visio if available - but use so little I cant justify purchase!
Open Office - Draw does nearly the same as Visio for state diagrams - has glue points on shapes so can move around and links stretch to fit.
Data flow diagrams - have used LucidChart.com for simple diagrams - free up to a certain size
Edit the PDFs out of Lucid with free version PDFxchange , can annotate with extra detail block comments and shapes.
This is my favourite tool for annotating printouts and pasted screenshots from windows snipping tool, etc for simple program documentation.
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Last one I did was try and figure out an embedded system, using paper and a log book (no ruler!). I think Viso is preferred but also seen good results from Word.
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I use the program "Pencil". I used to use RFFlow, but the free version only has a 30 object limit
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I use LucidChart - I find it has all the features I need of Visio but is easily available across multiple devices and can be shared with other people.
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I use Pencil. Not pencil and paper, but a freeware called Evolus Pencil. As my current employer hasn't bought me a Visio license, I had to find a free alternative.
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Besides paper and pencil, DIA is the only thing that works for me. Wondering why I'm not seeing a mention of it?
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Used Gliffy once or twice. Visio a few times when available. But I always come back to PowerPoint. I don't usually diagram anything too crazy. I will be honest i have used PowerPoint for everyhing from mockups, to rough floorplanning and blueprinting. So I'm a little bias. Maybe if I had any real skills at diagrams I would use more appropriate tools.
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I have been using Visio for software architecture drawings.
Not really a flowchart drawing tool per se, but Think & Do was a PC-based industrial control package that used flowcharts to document a machine's control logic. A medium sized project would contain 100+ flowchart. The flowcharts were compiled into a byte code stream that the run-time component would evaluate in real time. Scan times for a medium sized project was 2-3 msec.
I worked for Think & Do Software in the early 00's and am working to port the Visual 6.0 C++ solution to VS2019 C# so it will run on 64-bit Win-10. Visio and Excel have been helpful in documenting how the old C++ code worked
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Will Rogers
www.TND10.com
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