[krasicki]

I think there's an important distinction to be made as to the "goal" not of CASE tools but of iconic notation.

Iconic notations exist to describe all manner and form of reality and technical specification.

The first "goal" of UML was to eliminate and consolidate the free-range software development notations. And that was something that could have turned into something useful.

UML's attention turned to code generation and no-code paradigms that will take generations of refinement to ever be useful in complex environments. Diagramming notations were contorted to serve the goal of code generation instead of programmer utility.

The consequence was that programmers were denied anything personally useful about UML and instead were saddled with a soul-sucking, task master of a tool that never fulfilled the business community's no-code expectations. The kicker was that now the development staff needed to untangle the no-code, generated code to make it work. What's to like?

[cratermoon]

You've pinpointed what sent UML off the rails. CASE tools were going through one of their hype phases about the same time UML was getting attention. The CASE people latched on to UML as the notation that would enable automatic code generation and round-tripping, and that led to the contortions you mention.

We still have diagramming tools that create and work with the useful parts of UML in reasonable ways, we just needed to jettison the no-code weight that was dragging the notation into dead ends.