>The only thing that is notably missing from IDEA is the graphical representation: but raise your hand if you ever missed to see your program represented as a flowchart, for example.
(raises hand).
>Does it actually have any real value?
Yes.
>Perhaps, while you are learning programming.
Or when you're trying to understand the structure of a program you've just been assigned to work on, or that you wrote years ago and have to do a change, or when you want to see the big picture, etc etc.
Whenever I try to understand a program, I do draw structures of it. But it is NEVER the structure of the source code as is, but some parts the main flow with the unimportant bits left out (what is unimportant depends on the goal of the task at hand), mapped in some way that aligns with the goal of the investigation. It also has to include the runtime components, eg. objects, not classes.
I tried to use tools like Enterprise Architect in the past but failed to produce anything useful with them (that includes architecture diagrams - charts based on standards never seem to be fit for what I actually wanted to communicate).
The closest I ever got to usefulness was with database structures, we did manage to generate the actual production schema from ERwin for a SQL database at one place I worked, but of course, not the stored procedures.
>Whenever I try to understand a program, I do draw structures of it. But it is NEVER the structure of the source code as is, but some parts the main flow with the unimportant bits left out
While some tools might be more or less accommodating, there's nothing about visual representation per se that can't do that (including filtering the non-important parts, producing something akin to UML's interaction diagrams, etc).
(raises hand).
>Does it actually have any real value?
Yes.
>Perhaps, while you are learning programming.
Or when you're trying to understand the structure of a program you've just been assigned to work on, or that you wrote years ago and have to do a change, or when you want to see the big picture, etc etc.
Ever worked with a visual language?