[opk]

Even with Java 1.4 the obvious mapping of class diagrams to data structures made for terrible data structures. You end up with an interconnected maze of objects that is totally inefficient for the algorithms. The mess typically included redundant, bidirectional and cyclic links between objects and where an object's only purpose is to be a list of another type of object, someone ends up writing a more limited wrapper around std::list/Collection/whatever.

Managers were overly fond of the class diagrams because they could understand them. And dividing work between programmers by class rather than by logical feature somehow made sense to them. I recall one manager spending way too much time arranging to print a huge UML diagram across multiple sheets of A4, taping it to the wall and then annotating it constantly by hand.

But knowing it can still be useful for simple sketches. Similarly dynamic dispatch is a really useful tool for particular cases when programming – used alongside other non-OO techniques. Our industry follows fads and fashions to an amazing extent but when things fall out of favour the baby goes out with the bathwater.