project documentation

[aronclark1017]

Trying to package up a small bank account manager project that I have been tempering on for a while. One that is certainly worth something to me. Although I have created methods to whip up quick documents with all fields and properties. I would like something better to reference in order to express the mechanical functions. It is unclear to me about any standardized format for code documentation that exists. I have tried object orientated diagrams with shapes to try and express the mechanical flow of the code. But have settled on text methods using the code blocks and literature

 

[Skydiver]

If you look for the Rational Rose product, it can roundtrip between UML diagrams to generated code and back again... Supposedly.

(I only played with it briefly back in the early 2000's. It was okay. Not perfect, but still got rid of a lot of the drudgery. Pricey, thought.)

My personal opinion is that you have a high level UML use case diagram to show the interaction between systems/actors and the goal of each use case. And then you have a UML sequence diagram that shows the sequence calls between systems and actors. And then finally have the class diagrams that shows the methods on them. With proper objects oriented design the methods are more important than the fields/properties because object oriented programming is all about message passing, not the data.*

The sequence diagram will take care of the "mechanical" part that seems to be what you are trying to express in terms of what calls have to happen when.

Unfortunately, you will likely have to draw these UML diagrams or use some tool to do it. I don't think there is a (cheap) way to do this with metadata in the code or comments.

*It took me 10 years to learn that object oriented programming was about message passing, and not the data. I used to be focused on the data because I was all into data structures and algorithms.