Stewart Stremler wrote: > begin quoting James G. Sack (jim) as of Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 04:05:29PM > -0700: >> Christopher Smith wrote: >>> Gabriel Sechan wrote: >>> .. >>>> There's a reason why the most common design in electrical engineering >>>> is the state machine- its simple, it works well, and it turns hard to >>>> impossible problems into easily solved ones. >>>> >>> Yes, state machines are great. They make all problems easy, particularly >>> if you have billions of states with concurrent state transition events, >>> guarantees about isolation, state distributed across a WAN with >>> thousands of nodes, etc. It makes it so trivial to fully validate a >>> system. ;-) Furthermore, it's great that most programs tend to add >>> additional states that are otherwise unnecessary for solving a problem, >>> because that NEVER introduces new bugs or synchronization points. ;-) >> Would it maybe be worth considering an LPSG presentation (or two) on >> state-machine concepts (perhaps just an overview). > > You want the standard DFA/NDFA description? > > Perhaps a formal languages presentation? > > Don't think I could do proofs without a lot of prepwork.
Well, I don't have a formal CS background, and although I hear these terms, and have _some_ basic understanding, I'm sure I don't appreciate the "real meaning" of it all. For instance, it's not obvious to me why one would say eg, "..state machines are great. They make all problems easy.." ..but I have heard similar statements before. Just never pursued it, I guess. So, I guess I'm not looking for the proofs (correctness and/or whatever), but just a summary of the theory.. ..and [really neat if someone c/would do this] a few examples of coding practice to implement state machines for simple-but-real problems. I suppose I should just go reading and trying to teach myself, but I was hoping some evangelist might like to provide a couple hours of entertainment and enlightenment. Regards, ..jim -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
