A blog on software modeling, UML, model-driven engineering, and low-code, with roundups of diagramming and code generation tools.
HN commenters link it for its lists of text-to-UML and browser-based diagramming tools, and one reader uses it to follow their modeling niche.
Behold: THE LAST ONE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_One_%28software%29
> The Last One is a computer program released in 1981 by the British company D.J. "AI" Systems.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Now obsolete, it took input from a user and generated an executable program in the BASIC computer language.
It was THE LAST ONE because it was the last program you'd need to buy. FOR-EV-ER. While its baseball-eating ability was unknown, it was "all the programs you'd ever need for £260" and it apparently focused on ETL jobs; that is, extracting data from files, transforming it, and loading it into some other file. Talend for the Doctor Who set, in other words, and it was set to EX-TER-MI-NATE programmers. Maybe it did; after all, we don't very well write programmes, now, do we?
https://modeling-languages.com/last-one-code-generator-basic-1981/
https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorld1981-02
It certainly got a lot of hype at the time but, like all Coming Things, it's hard to tell where it Went.
By "field" I assume some area in IT.
My primary source of breaking news is Hacker News. The links provide me with a good general overview of what is happening overall in IT.
In my specific niche (MBSE/PLE/GenProg/IoT/CPS) I visit http://modeling-languages.com for field specific general (isn't that an oxymoron?) news. Other than that I read IEEE and ACM journals and papers published by practitioners whom I follow. I also read the blogs of a small number of people who have genuine knowledge to share.
As far as programming languages and frameworks go, I only deep dive on an as needed basis (which is rarely). There is way too much conflicting information, especially in the area of JS frameworks.
IMHO many programmers are caught up in the jack of all frameworks / languages / tools drama. We are paid to deliver dependable solutions to real problems on time and on budget. The many distractions only reduce our effectiveness.
I used a lot of Objectory and UML diagrams in the nineties, mostly for specification and presentation reasons; don't remember when I used one last time; must be more than ten years ago; from my point of view UML is overkill most of the times; usually takes more time to explain to people what all the sophisticated symbols mean than e.g. simple block diagrams; and systems tend to be so big these days that UML diagrams become too big and confusing; we had the same evolution in hardware development; schematic diagrams were almost completely displaced by hardware description languages (such as Verilog) because systems became much too big to be decently modeled with diagrams. EDIT: it's worth taking a look at this article: https://modeling-languages.com/uml-opinions-creators/
Are you looking for a textual UML tool (https://modeling-languages.com/text-uml-tools-complete-list/) to "write" your UML models and then easily render them in your browser?
Or for a graphical online UML editor (https://modeling-languages.com/web-based-modeling-tools-uml-er-bpmn/)?
If the former, then plantUML is my favourite. If the latter, there quite a few options but one that's easy and fast is http://www.umletino.com/
https://www.draw.io/ is a free online visio replacement
http://dia-installer.de/ visio clone on win/mac/linux
http://staruml.io/ UML modeller on win/mac/linux
https://www.calligra.org/flow/ Linux KDE flowcharting tool with win/mac installers
http://thinkcomposer.com/ Mindmaps, flowcharts etc. on Win only
https://modeling-languages.com/web-based-modeling-tools-uml-er-bpmn/ reviews UML tools
> textual UML tool (https://modeling-languages.com/text-uml-tools-complete-list/)
Mermaid is in the comments, not the main list, but I have been using it for a while now for our specs; it can be rendered to whatever image, but also on the client side which is great for embedding in 'living documents'.