Visio vs. Raptor

[swoll1980]

I have to learn programing, and I was wandering if Visio is worth the money compared to Raptor, or some other open source flowchart project(suggest one). What do you think?

[Mehall]

Dia is pretty much an Open Source version of Visio, and is utterly awesome.

Cross platform too, if you have to use Windows anywhere. There might even be a Dia Portable at portableapps.com (not in the official section, but in development)

[arcdrag]

I have to learn programing, and I was wandering if Visio is worth the money compared to Raptor, or some other open source flowchart project(suggest one). What do you think?

Depends on what you mean by "Learn programming". If you're just starting out, you don't really need a flow chart program to plot your thoughts right away. A spare sheet of paper and pencil will do the job quite nicely for the size of programs that you'll have the ability to grasp at first. Perhaps after 12 months or so you might need a program for your UML, but I wouldn't really bother right away. Just starting out you'll have enough to learn without bothering to learn an unnecessary (for now at least) piece of software.

Personally, I absolutely hate Visio but my college seems to have a hard on for Microsoft and makes all of my project planning due in Visio format. Most of the time I just use dia to gather my thoughts, and then redo my diagrams in Visio.

[Mr. Picklesworth]

For UML stuff I quite like Gaphor. A bit more colourful and friendly than Dia and directly aimed at UML instead of being a crazy mishmash. It also has a cool example of how tabbed documented interfaces should be implemented! (Specifically, it opens all diagrams for a project in tabs, but gives each project its own window).

Keep in mind it installs a crazy zope3 service by default. Go into Services Administration and disable it, because it does not need to be always running. That's just Debian being daft.

[KiwiNZ]

I would opt for Dia. Visio has a high price tag if you are not going to use a lot.

[Raggylad]

Does Dia have the building design features that are in Visio ?

[Amilo1718]

Does Dia have the building design features that are in Visio ?

I'd say... try it :p