Re: UML-like diagrams for Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg62982] Re: UML-like diagrams for Mathematica
- From: "Steven T. Hatton" <hattons at globalsymmetry.com>
- Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 06:02:51 -0500 (EST)
- References: <dnbn24$5ru$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Steven T. Hatton wrote: > I am not a passionate fan of UML. I often find UML to obfuscate rather > than > illuminate. Nonetheless, the basic idea of using graphical > representations to help communicate ideas about programming constructs is > a valuable tool. I once had a professor tell me "When you want to > understand a problem, draw > a picture." I believe there is a great deal of value in that advice which > Dr. John A. Wheeler gave me. I find it very surprising that books about > Mathematica often use graphics to provide insight into mathematical > problems, but rarely use diagrams to represent the structure of objects in > Mathematica. > > The particular subject I am thinking about is the structure of a Symbol. > I > really don't know what the internal structure is. All I know is there is > some kind of hash table holding symbols and their associated values. My > current understanding of symbols in Mathematica is that they consist of > (or are associated with) at least some of the following: > > UpValues > DownValues > OwnValues[*] > SubValues > Options > Attributes > internal data Whoops! messages Context Head I'm suspect I'm still missing something that can be meaningfully associated with a symbol. -- The Mathematica Wiki: http://www.mathematica-users.org/ Math for Comp Sci http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/math/bmwcs/master.html Math for the WWW: http://www.w3.org/Math/