[bane]

You're not wrong, but learning how to draw out a system is a critical communication skill in almost every Engineering discipline. It's so important in Software that there's even an entire set of industry standard diagramming grammars for this under the umbrella "UML".

[codingdave]

I feel like UML was way bigger in the 90s. I haven't been on a team that used UML since 1998. To be fair, it seems like the Java community still uses it more. But I've seen a big backlash against tools that are so formalized.

[scoot_718]

UML is usually a bad smell rather than a best practice.

I've seen good sequence diagrams and good high level architecture diagrams, but nobody decent uses UML. It's far too cumbersome and at the wrong level for an explanatory diagram.

[DelightOne]

What is being used instead?

[ozychhi]

Common sense

[AnimalMuppet]

In a bit more detail, and perhaps with less snark:

UML has some decent diagrams. What they communicate, they communicate well. But don't diagram everything - that's a waste. When you need a diagram for something, a UML-ish diagram is fine. When you don't need it, don't draw it "just because". We're actually not in the business of producing UML diagrams.