What is the way to explain a java application code to someone?

[Monica Shiralkar]

I have to explain a java application code to people in my team. Should I make plain text notes and explain or some diagrams ?which
diagram?UML or sequence diagrams?

thanks

[Joe San]

In fact, to any ideal programmer, there is often times no need to explain application source code. In real world, this is however not the case. Your best bet would be to draw some pictures that represent data flow and explain that to your team.

[Winston Gutkowski]

Monica. Shiralkar wrote:I have to explain a java application code to people in my team. Should I make plain text notes and explain or some diagrams ?which
diagram?UML or sequence diagrams?

As with any question like this: it depends.

Is your audience going to be familiar with any/all of the things you listed? If so, use 'em by all means, and personally I'd favour diagrams over text wherever possible.

Also: Use javadoc. Copiously. Methods, fields, classes and packages; and include lots of @link and @see links when you're writing it. If you're in a lab environment, this will allow to you simply refer your audience to the API.

3. Write dumb code - in the event that you have to get down to the nitty-gritty of actual source code, this will save you a lot of time explaining exactly how everything works, since it should be fairly obvious.

Which bring us to a final point: What is the point of this presentation? To explain what the application does, or exactly how it does it? In the latter case, you're likely to need to give your audience access to source code, and personally I'd stick to portions that demonstrate particular techniques or patterns that you've used. After all, if they're members of your team, one would presume they're also programmers, so you shouldn't need to explain every line of code to them.

My 2¢. HIH.

Winston

[Monica Shiralkar]

Is your audience going to be familiar with any/all of the things you listed? If so, use 'em by all means, and personally I'd favour diagrams over text wherever possible.

Audience in this case is 'my manager'. Are sequence diagrams related to this? or it is for different thing.

thanks

[Paul Clapham]

That's sort of helpful, but more information would be useful. For example, is your manager a former (within the last 3 years) programmer, or an accountant who knows nothing about programming, or what? You can imagine that you would use different explanations in those two cases.

(Which is a longer and more detailed way of reiterating "It depends".)

[Monica Shiralkar]

s your manager a former (within the last 3 years) programmer, or an accountant who knows nothing about programming,

He might have done java long long back.