| No. UML was not a fraud. It's a modeling language that abstracts, using highly specific iconic vernaculars, numerous technical views of interest relating to software development. By definition, that task was never going to be an easy nor mutable exercise. If fraud existed it was in the marketing of the CASE tools UML was embedded in. The claims and expectations were wholly orthogonal to software engineering practice of that or any time. If memory serves me correctly, mainframe commercial development projects routinely failed or required as much budget and time to complete at anticipated delivery as when they had initially started. The white-collar blame was assigned to the quality of development. The push back legitimately was the assertion that requirements constantly changed (and how could they not?). The self-anointed gurus of the time responded by creating smoke and mirrors solutions that largely manifested themselves in exclusive, eclectic, and proprietary modeling languages. The predictable collapse of that circular firing squad set of methodologies spawned UML under the bastard thumb of IBM (Rational). Big investment means and meant exclusive, profit-driven ambitions, not fraud - self-serving, big money investment. The client community was drowned in error rate charts, line-of-code (LOC) costs, and business baby-talk illustrations of before and after CASE development anticipated savings. This form of techno-magic ponzi scheme is still being played Agile-wide. Once the client makes a sizable investment in the pixie dust they will never admit it was a waste of time and money. And, just for the record, there were critics, sensible advocates, and sober analysts who were ignored, slandered, and whose careers were rougher had they not bothered. |
Yes, that was the claim I intended to make. Thank you for saying it more clearly.
> smoke and mirrors solutions…proprietary modeling languages…predictable collapse…Big investment means and meant exclusive, profit-driven ambitions,
Yes, yes! I can see we totally agree!
> not fraud
Wait, doesn't that contradict the entire rest of your comment, including the immediately previous and following phrases, "profit-driven ambitions" and "self-serving, big money investment"? How can something both be a "smoke and mirrors" "self-serving" "Ponzi scheme" and also be "not fraud"?
It sounds like you agree with all my factual claims, adding supporting points of your own for them, but you think "fraud" is not the right word to use? Why not? My best guess at this point is that you don't know what the word "fraud" means.
Also, as a side note, I have no idea what this sentence is supposed to mean:
> By definition, that task was never going to be an easy nor mutable exercise.