Re: Ah, those uninitiated people...

[Jorge <xxopxe@...>]

On Thu, 2010-01-14 at 17:05 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> Uh, the posting you replied to contained an example right after the part
> you quoted.  Let me fetch that spoon.

Ah, that was an example! I thought it was just assembler :) 
With assembler, my successes are reduced to implementing a traffic light
in a PIC16 with 3 LEDs and 2 buttons, and implementing half a
screensaver on a 8086 (the screen goes blank after a delay, but never
resumes back on a keystroke). It's like a negative superpower i have.


> Well, the point is that it often maps well to the cases where you
> don't
> want to use a state machine.
> 
> I mean, who wants to use a state machine?  Seriously?
> 
> Even if you see people drawing a state machine, they tend to do it in
> a
> diagram, with anonymous states.  States that you have to name and look
> up just are not fun.

That makes sense. I've had to generate state machines either as an
intermediate representation for expressing higher level stuff, or when
implementing stuff documented as such (network protocols et al). It's
pretty hard to think in state machines, and they always cause the
impression you're overthinking and overcomplicating. Chances are you're
NOT designing the TCP handshake, after all.


Jorge