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Comment by ijidak | Hacker News Reader

Question. What tools are people using for architecture documentation besides Visio?

What's the most productive tool you've found?

I keep going back to Visio, but I really want a tool purpose designed for quick architecture diagrams that's more opinionated.

Visio is so open ended, to me, it feels only slightly more efficient than using Photoshop.

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(I'm the author of the article)

I've written about requirements for docu-tools https://www.innoq.com/en/articles/2022/01/principles-of-tech...

In short: You need text + diagramming tools. Go as light as possible, start small (draw.io and Markdown/AsciiDoc). Use high-end modeling tools (like Enterprise Architect or ArchiMate only in larger teams and/or with formal documentation requirements (20+ devs). Have a look at docToolchain.

I'm using yEd, but that likely has the same issues as you mention, being very open-ended and requiring lots of micromanagement of styles and layouts. Perhaps you are seeking a tool such as plantuml in which you specify your diagrams textually and have them rendered by a compiler. It only supports a specific set of diagram types, primarily from the UML family, but I think it's also possible to install a third party C4 style.

Im using draw.io Just because it integrates Well to jira and confluence, But there really isnt much difference apart from license costs.

draw.io - offers both online and offline modes, which is great.

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