No - I loathe the concept of UML almost as much as most of the ghastly tools that have been created to work with it [NB important to note that I am not including umlbin in this comment as I haven't tried it].

Sketches are good (http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/UmlAsSketch.html) but if you are simple sketching things then in my opinion you don't need all of the baggage that comes with UML.

I work at Lucidchart (http://www.lucidchart.com), a browser-based diagramming tool, and I can definitely confirm that UML is still used very widely. Though I can't share specifics, I can confirm it's among our most popular diagram types.

Yep UML is not going anywhere

I use it sometimes when I want to think of my options. I use it way less than my teachers told me I would but it still has its uses.

Strangely it is not dead. Do not know how widely it is used. From other hand what are other good standardized options to share/document software structure and behavior?

A lot of people use it as intended, but most of us use a minimal variant to communicate ideas on a whiteboard or email. It also usually sticks to class and maybe interaction diagrams.

Flow charts and swimlanes are much more common.