On: Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?

[fosspowered]

PlantUML[1]: Drawing any diagram helps me to have something concrete as it makes me think of the various components, connections and the invariants. It also gives a bigger picture.

It is also very easy to learn and can be embedded anywhere rendered by Plant UML server or the rendering can be handled by your internal plant UML service.

[1] - https://plantuml.com/

[Jtsummers → fosspowered]

There are several VS Code plugins for PlantUML and Graphviz that allow for live rendering. That has proved very useful for communicating ideas without needing a drag-and-drop interface, and the result is a file that I can drop into a git repository.

[kyawzazaw → Jtsummers]

There is a JetBrains extension too!