Hi there, this is Lukáš.
I’m the founder and developer of Diagrams, an upcoming Mac application for creating structured diagrams. In this post, I’d like to introduce you to this project which I have dedicated my life to for the last few years.
I came into software development in one of the weirdest ways possible: Before I started programming, I taught myself UML, the visual modeling language for describing software systems. Despite the controversy about the usefulness of UML and the processes it is usually connected to, I saw greater value in its way of visual representation.
Since I’m a visually oriented person, I still do a lot of drawing when developing software nowadays. This helps me to structure my ideas and possibly to come up with better architectures in the end.
As I was looking for a digital solution which would support my workflows on the Mac, I wasn’t able to find any suitable applications.
The UML editors supported the logic, but looked really crappy, and were overloaded with tons of unnecessary features.
The vector graphics editors, on the other hand, were not designed with the logic in mind. I had to fight the features specific to graphics editing as well as the flexible formatting and layout possibilities.
These tools were too complex for my needs. I wanted something as simple as a plain paper with all the benefits of the digital world. This is why I decided to build it myself. In the form of a truly native macOS application.
Currently, the app is under development. The core architecture of the app is finished and a few internal alpha versions were already released. But there is still plenty of work to be done. You can expect the private release to come out next year.
Over the next weeks, we will reveal more details about Diagrams on this blog. We will explain where it tries to innovate and improve on the existing tools. We will share further concepts, show off some bits from the design process, and discuss individual features.
If you’re interested in these topics you should read this blog, subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on Twitter.
Stay tuned!
Lukáš