More than twelve years have passed since UML, the Unified Modeling Language, became a standard. 
At the beginning of the 1990s there were 26 published methods on object-orientation, most methods with its own notation. It was to address at least the notation problem that UML was conceived.
UML also found a number of detractors. It was criticized by the academic world.The great David Parnas called UML the “Undefined Modeling Language”, a strongly exaggerated but not unfounded criticism. The criticism stung.
The original leaders of the agile movement were also strongly against modeling.For them it was the “Unnecessary Modeling Language” – they said “no modeling – just code”.
Microsoft, reticent to do anything that might strengthen the competition, also did not initially support UML. Instead they were moving in a different direction based on domain-specific languages.
Now we find the pendulum swinging back. There are a number of good and easy to use tools. The criticism from the academic community has quieted. Agility has been embraced by large companies who see value in both “smart” modeling combined with an agile approach. People use UML though skepticism about the tools remains; many people work with sketches on white boards and use tools sparingly. Microsoft found that domain-specific languages did not replace the role for UML and that customers actually wanted to use UML. Today Microsoft is a strong supporter of UML.
Today the world looks upon UML with a more balanced perspective. UML is not the ”silver bullet” it was sold as ten years ago. Nor is it as bad as academicians, agilistas and competitors claimed five years ago. Used appropriately it is a practical tool for raising the level of abstraction on software from the level of code to the level of the overall system. And its use increases again, as it should, but now with more common sense.
Still, UML has become complex and clumsy. For 80% of all software only 20% of UML is needed. However, it is not easy to find the subset of UML which we would call the “Essential” UML. We must make UML
Reference: Ivar Jacobson
Quote:
There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses. Bjarne Stroustrup
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