Ask HN: Guidelines for making clear architecture diagrams

1

C4 model

Second this. Reference for anyone looking I to it: https://c4model.com/ There is also quite a lot of options for helping create these diagrams. I've found https://structurizr.com/ to be the best of what I've tried so far.

#Flow Charts And Diagrams #Diagrams #UML 17 social mentions

2

IcePanel

<a href="https://icepanel.io/">https://icepanel.io/</a> The best I've ever used.

#Design Tools #Developer Tools #Software Architecture 35 social mentions

3

Graphviz

Conventions exist but they're mostly crap. Along the KISS principle, boxed elements with connecting nodes are the best (most universally understood). In mathematical terms, this is an 'undirected graph', a 'directed graph' is the same but with directionality on the links between nodes. The standard toolkit for defining these in software is https://graphviz.org/ If you need to show the interaction between elements over time in a distributed or complex system, the best is the message sequence chart. The best tool for this appears to be https://www.mcternan.me.uk/mscgen/ which is apparently graphviz-inspired. There are a plethora of latter-day derivatives such as web-native versions, stylized versions, etc. But these are all functionally irrelevant if you want to be clear, portable and maintainable. The basic workflow is "want to communicate something", "define in text" (which can be done by code), "have image generated", optionally go back and refine. There are also advanced features of these tools which can create complex diagrams like tabular protocol structure diagrams, clickable versions, color highlights, and SVG interactive diagrams.

#Diagrams #Flowcharts #Flow Charts And Diagrams 80 social mentions