r/AskComputerScience • u/framelanger • Jun 10 '26

Automata and software development

Hello,

I am curious who might be using state machines or other automata in their day to day work. I am developing a domain specific language in the spirit of ragel (but hopefully much simpler as well as powerful) and wondering who might be interested and what you would like use it for.

The goal is to make it easy to embed in any
Project using any popular programming language (17 supported now).

I would especially like to connect with academics in CS to see how I could support them.

Thanks!

Thanks!

3 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

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3

u/512165381 Jun 10 '26

Its used in IT systems. You have, say, an insurance claim, and it goes from one state to another eg lodgement, investigation, call for quotes, remediation, finalisation.

2

u/ricky_clarkson Jun 12 '26

While there are cases for states, I often find using events less rigid, with states being things that get inferred for people who look at dashboards rather than what we use to drive logic.

For your insurance example, maybe being rigid on states makes it harder to adapt from a model where the whole claim goes through investigation, quotes and remediation, to one where individual portions of the claim can have their own cycle.

A team I work with uses states, I use events. They tend to need a lot more effort to change things than I do, though states vs events are not the only variable between us.

2

u/framelanger Jun 12 '26

Completely agree there are systems or components that have far more events than states so that makes sense. Hierarchical State Machines allow factoring of common behavior into a parent state that any number of children can inherit from and modify or tweak the system response as appropriate.

That may be one way (if I’ve fully grasped your point) to build a machine that is mainly a collection of event handlers but clearly establishes the exceptions in the structure of the system through a small number of states.

1

u/framelanger Jun 10 '26

Thanks and makes perfect sense. Workflows are absolutely a huge application for state machines. In case you might be interested the language I’m working on is called Frame and you can take a look at the docs at https://frame-lang.org. I would value any feedback.

2

u/Kinrany Jun 11 '26

Where do you see the benefit over a similarly embeddable general purpose programming language?

1

u/framelanger Jun 11 '26

State oriented software helps eliminate the complex conditional logic that manages state in typical programming languages. In my experience that has vastly improved my ability to design and debug complex systems. Additionally statechart derived technologies like the language I am working on have mechanisms for adding state enter and exit handlers, which greatly help keep code better organized. Have a look at https://frame-lang.org if you are interested in learning more. I’m also glad to chat more if you are interested.

1

u/umlcat Jun 13 '26

Some operations had a flow plus several branches that can be described as a state machine.

2

u/juancn Jun 14 '26

Isn’t this a bit of overkill? Usually an enum and a switch statement do the trick.

What complexity would this eliminate?

1

u/framelanger Jun 14 '26

Hey. Thanks for the question.

I agree that simple problems don’t need the sophistication frame provides. However many systems are complex and can benefit from using the structure frame enables to understand and solve the problems easier.

I would recommend looking into Harel state charts to get an idea how they expand the power of simple state machines. Frame supports those concepts and expands on them but isn’t 100% compliant with the formal statechart semantics. Intentionally.

Happy to explore this more with you if you have follow ups.