The value of any given diagram really depends on what level of understanding you are trying to communicate. A simple block diagram that outlines the major components of the system can be helpful to describe the general structure of an app. In Clojure this would probably correspond roughly to the namespace organization. It's fairly typical to have a namespace comprised of mostly functions with a small set of mutable references at the top, so at some level you still have the encapsulation and modularization typical in OO packages, modules, or classes. Look at how C or Fortran libraries are documented though. It's more about functionality and less about relationships, because the relationships aren't normally complicated enough to warrant diagrams.
I think one of the reasons something like a UML diagram can be helpful in a large OO application is because you tend to get these convoluted class relationships that become harder and harder to keep organized in your mind. Class relations can represent both data dependencies like entity relationships, and also functional dependencies coming from derivation, extension or whatever. In a Clojure program you get simpler data structures with less complicated relationships, and so I'm not convinced that something like UML is really that useful. At a lower level you can document the important data structures and look at the use, require, and import statements to determine the functional dependencies. Maybe an interesting diagram could be created with that data plus the function comments. My guess is that besides documenting functions themselves, finding ways to document the data structures that are returned by functions, and then aggregating call-graph data to show broader functional dependencies will go a long way towards describing larger Clojure systems. -Jeff On May 11, 10:18 am, Donell Jones <alliwantisca...@googlemail.com> wrote: > Hi Team, > I am really interested in functional programming. But I am asking > myself, what if the project get bigger, like the software Runa realise > with Clojure. In OOP we got diagrams like UML to visualise this. But > what can we do in FP ? Are there any diagrams that can be used to > explain things ? > > I think this is very important when it comes to documentation. > > Thanks for your help! > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your > first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group > athttp://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
