Getting Touch with software engineering
Building software is a big pain for some people. Research said that "the longer you build, the more you changes, and it will give you the most expensive in a cost".
Therefore since software engineering live and make the software development more attractive and challenging. Many people try to drop the bad myth about software development and create some methodology. In my everyday life developing or learn to build software I really love to do it with some sense of methodology called software engineering process. Some of them that I think really cool is RUP (based on Larman style), ICONIX (Doug Rosenberg), and XP (Kent beck), well you can type your own style just like "Hajar Bleh" (official name is Build and Fix Right?)
After know some methodology, you can build and implement your style by standardized UML diagram and concept (some the best book is created by Martin Fowler). Of course we not draw the UML using paper (although you can do so). There are so many tools which are having predicate as a UML Case tool who can doing RTE (round trip engineering) below is the best three according to my opinion
1. Together Soft by Borland alias BT (Great when you talking integrated solution with your IDE such as VS.NET, Eclipse or JBuilder. The bad side is developed by Java so is slower and fat in size)
2. Power Designer by Sybase alias PD (Cool when you need combine UML with another cutting edge modeling style such as IDEFIX E-R Diagram, XML diagram, CDM, etc. The bad side of this software is not friendly with UML standard 2.0)
3. Enterprise Architect by Sparx System alias EA (Awesome when you think the size, efficient and lightweight UML Case tool. But the bad one is in RTE seem not simple. You often do synchronize your model<->source with your finger Ctrl-Alt-M or Ctrl-R and Ctrl-G you know it if you try itJ)
Now I’m using EA since my PC is rather old and doesn’t have a sufficient memory. (Poor when coding in Vs2005 in this machine. need your donation he. he...) Anyway if you want get some free EA template in RUP, or ICONIX you can download it soon in http://ridilabs.net/download.aspx