[discodachshund]

I get the points about not needing a formalised system for diagrams, even if C4 is quite light touch in my opinion (I never go down to the code level).

However, I do have to credit structurizr, which outputs C4 diagrams, as a great productivity boost. One model producing multiple views at all specificities is fantastic compared to mermaid, plantuml, etc, where every diagram needs to be self contained and define and redefine the same components over and over. Branching off, editing the model, presenting ideas, has been a very successful workflow for me.

[williamdclt]

I’ve only tried structirizr briefly, but I found it too inflexible. No way to draw concepts that aren’t strictly part of C4. For example I wanted to encapsulate 2 components in a box to represent that they’re currently deployed as one service (not necessarily a good thing to do in absolute but would have helped my team to grok it better): impossible.

I do like the idea of describing architecture formally, but the lack of customizability of diagram output was too painful

[simon_brown]

I don't have the full context of what you're trying to model, but "two components deployed as one service" might be better represented as a container. If that's not the case, you can use the "group" concept to group components together -> https://docs.structurizr.com/dsl/cookbook/groups/

Alternatively, https://likec4.dev provides a way to create an arbitrary number of abstraction levels (although I wouldn't recommend such an approach).

[jhund]

Plus one for structurizr. Its model driven approach makes it a lot easier to keep the diagrams consistent with the code: You describe the architecture, and structurizr renders the diagrams.

[phlakaton]

Mermaid's definitely not well-suited for the amount of text and text formatting that C4 requires. You can do it, but you will be jumping through hoops, and the autolayout breaks down pretty quickly when the arrows between boxes get chatty.

[gengstrand]

True but the big selling point for mermaid is the github integration and you can audit the changes to the diagrams via git log -p