UML vs Flow Charting

Fellow Ranchers
I have heard a lot of ramblings about UML, Rational Rose, ect. They almost seem to be the buzz words of the IT industry right now.
But since you don't actually code from UML how is it any better than standard IT flowcharting? I mean, with flowcharting you can actually describe the flow or interaction of modules.
It is my understanding(Which is still kind of basic at this point) that UML can be used to describe state as opposed to logic flow of modules but in the real world is that necessary a better thing?
I know from my standpoint describing a class works gives me a better design view(flowcharting) than describing the state of the class.
Please help me in trying to understand the difference.
Regards
Travis M Gibson, SCJP www.travismgibson.com

It depends at what stage of the project you are using which portion of UML. During Inception I can see that UML does not give the entire picture to the user. At this phase, Actor Diagrams and Use Cases are recommended in UML. Frankly speaking, the project sponsors can relate better to Data Flow Diagrams. Class Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams and Collaboration Diagrams are useful later on during Elaboration and primarily during contruction.
Is flowcharting similar to Activity Diagrams and State Diagrams in UML?

Stick to flowchart if you are doing procedural programming.

The "activity diagram" does sort of fill the role of the flowchart. But a flowchart doesn't show interaction between classes and that is the key to object oriented programming. With UML, we identify candidate classes and then show how they interact with each other in a sequence diagram. That is 1,000x more likely to lead to good oo design than working with flow charts.

Well, you can generate code in Rose from a UML diagram. But I personally wouldn't recommend it.
I think about high-level flows/interactions for a program or system at the beginning of a project but don't draw actual flowcharts at all. I do lots of use cases, sequence diagrams, and class diagrams. I don't really think I've needed to do a flow chart on any of the projects I've done (all OO in C++ or Java).
As Erich pointed out you could use flow charts to present a high-level description of what is going on in the system.
John

I would use Rose to generate class skeletons after I have developed my sequence diagrams.

I was thinking about this issue and the fact is that in a well-designed, well-partitioned application, the sequence diagram provides even more informaation than a flow chart ever could. Flow charts are pointless other than for explaining a use case and developing a test script.