When it’s gobbledygook. This month I am mostly reading about diagnostic systems standards with a view to implementing one. There seemed to be lots of UML in the document. UML is a “language” which is represented in diagrams rather than words, but which nevertheless has defined meaning attached to the various arrows boxes and labels. So I begged and borrowed books on UML and now I “parlay voo” UML to some degree. Enough to know that the complex and subtle points this document seeks to make are lost in a wash of shoddy diagrams. Here I try to give a flavour of the quality of their UML by way of a description of a car in English.

“A car is a certain type of vehicle. It has four whales, a diver and a fool tank. Fool goes into the tank and the engine runs. Exhaust goes in the exhaust pipe and the engine runs. When the engine breaks the diver press the breaks. When the diver press the pedal apart from the breaks, the car goes. The four whales fills with air through the blow-holes and are made of blubber treads. Blubber treads is worn when the pedal no longer breaks. A passenger is a type of seat, which is related to a diver by attachment to the bottom.”

Thankfully this document specifies diagnostic equipment, not the software that runs our cars.