Ask HN: What tools do you use for system design?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20096865

34 9 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

These days, I am doing a lot of high-level systems architecture. I'm looking for a tool that strikes the right balance between speed of delivery and quality of diagram. What do you use?

q3k• 7 years ago

Whiteboard and then a design doc [1] on Google Docs.

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mffMF9FaUJ3WwRmKNJGMBxfn...

jluxenberg• 7 years ago

I find that sequence diagrams can be really helpful when documenting systems. Here's a nifty web UI for creating them: https://sequencediagram.org/

jjevanoorschot• 7 years ago

Whimsical [1] is an amazing tool for creating system designs and sequence diagrams.

[1] https://whimsical.com

rafael-rinaldi• 7 years ago

I've been using OmniGraffle[1] for that purpose for the past couple of years. Very satisfied with it.

[1] https://www.omnigroup.com/omnigraffle

mastry• 7 years ago

Lately I've been using SimpleDiagrams [1]. The sketch look and the simpler UI is a nice change from Visio.

[1] https://www.simplediagrams.com/

kejaed• 7 years ago

We’ve started to use PlantUML for diagrams on the systems and software team. It allows for the diagram source to be stored in version control and has built in support in our Wiki and VSCode.

http://plantuml.com/

aosaigh• 7 years ago

This doesn’t necessary answer your question but I use an iPad, Apple Pencil and Notability for all design and then usually write a document with included sketches where relevant.

remify• 7 years ago

https://draw.io/ is great

roland35• 7 years ago

I like to use yed! It works for both flow charts and system organization charts.

https://www.yworks.com/products/yed

Ask HN: What tools do you use for system design?

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