Your architecture diagram is lying: I tested both ways of writing it as code
Most architecture diagrams in production are out of date — not through carelessness, but because they live in a PNG someone drew once while the code kept changing. Nobody opens a visual editor to move a box when they ship a microservice at 11pm. A closed C4 web editor made the rounds on Habr this week: no repo, nothing to self-host, nothing to measure. So I tested the two alternatives you can run…
Most architecture diagrams in production are outdated, not due to neglect but because they exist as static PNGs drawn once while the codebase undergoes frequent changes. Opening a visual editor to rearrange boxes when deploying a microservice at 11pm is not a common practice. A C4 web editor that garnered attention on Habr this week lacked a repository, self-hosting capabilities, and a method to gauge its effectiveness.
In a bid to test the two viable alternatives that can be run independently on a live system, I evaluated Structurizr CLI and C4-PlantUML.
Structurizr CLI generates all three C4 levels (context, containers, and components) in mere seconds from a single .dsl file. Conversely, C4-PlantUML achieves comparable outcomes without requiring installation but at the expense of tripling the size of the model being maintained. The comprehensive write-up includes the precise commands, the four review gates enabling this transformative approach (diff, PR review, versioning, CI), a side-by-side comparison of both tools, and guidance on selecting the most suitable option.
For a detailed analysis, refer to the full measurements at https://efraingaray.com/en/blog/arquitectura-como-codigo/.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
