UML Class Diagrams for Programmers

Course details

UML is a valuable tool - do you know how to use it?

As programmers, we rarely work in isolation - we often have to communicate our designs and our ideas to our colleagues.  In addition, we get specifications from analysts and architects that we need to understand.  UML can be incredibly valuable for this kind of communication!

In this course, I want to teach you how you, as a programmer, can make the most of UML Class diagrams, both as a tool for communication with other programmers, analysts, and architects, and also as a valuable tool for designing software.  Because this is a course for programmers, we'll look at lots of source code as we create diagrams.  Finally, the video lectures are supplement with written material that you can refer back to.

We'll start by looking at the value that we can get from UML Class Diagrams.  We'll cover basic concepts, such as how classes are represented in UML.  We'll look at the relationships that can exist between class, and at how we can represent certain specialized classes.  We'll also work through a detailed example to help reinforce everything that you'll learn during the course.

In the course, I want to help you do a couple of different things.  I want to help you understand the fundamental concepts of UML Class Diagrams, effectively communicate with your peers using UML Class Diagrams, read UML Class Diagrams created by other people, create your own UML Class Diagrams, and understand how to get value out of UML Class Diagrams, without the need for expensive tools.

This course is aimed at programmers who want to use UML Class Diagrams to improve how they work, as well as software architects and analysts who create UML diagrams for other people - such a specifications.

You won't need much for this course, although it's not a course for beginner programmers.  We will talk about object-oriented programming concepts quite a lot, so it will be good if you have experience with object-oriented languages like Java or C#, otherwise some parts of the course might be difficult to follow.  You'll also need motivation and a desire to learn.  You will not need any experience with UML, or any expensive UML tools - in this course, we'll focus on the fundamentals, so no specific tools - you can even draw diagrams on paper if you want.  I want to help you understand the concepts, not the tools!  The tools are irrelevant - diagrams drawn on paper or a whiteboard as just as good as diagrams drawn in an expensive tool.

See you in the course!

*Image courtesy of Pexels.