RArads·Jul 3, 2012
One problem with a state machine approach compared to MVC is that it isn't as familiar. Do you use a Moore or a Mealy machine? A combination of the two? Most people don't use state machines to model the flow of an entire web application, so if you try it out, you might feel like you're on your own.
It can be worth it, though. I used state machines for a client-side UI in ClojureScript a few months ago. It forced me to think hard about the structure and flow of the app. But after that, my state was in an explicit, contained area. If I had been using something like Backbone, the state would have been hidden among the various model objects. I felt like I had a much better mental model of how the program worked after the initial design process. Keeping state in control reduces complexity. [1]
Another benefit was that the state machine library
Read the rest
I used allowed me to audit the trail of states as they happened. When a user toggled a checkbox to trigger an event, I could look in the JS console and see the moment the checkbox was triggered. If something wasn't working, I could often debug it by seeing if the states and transitions happened in the right order. I wouldn't be able to do this with a traditional MVC framework.
There's one very important thing that nobody has mentioned yet: state machines look ugly in your code. When they get big, they are difficult to follow. I started out using a state machine library that was just too simple. Once the interactions became complex, I was getting lost in my code. I looked for a clearer, more succinct way of modeling state machines, and eventually I came to Harel statecharts. [2]
Statecharts are a way to model state machines without explicitly writing out a ton of redundant states. The number of states becomes a problem when you actually try to model an application with a basic non-deterministic FSM. If you're interested in using state machines in your web application, you need to read the linked paper. The example of modeling a digital watch with statecharts makes it easier to see how you could use them in a web app.
I believe statecharts are to MVC as Clojure is to every mutable state language out there. It feels weird at first, but once you get used to it, it's much simpler. It's just not necessarily easier. [3] If you want to try them out, there's a good library called Stativus for writing statecharts in JavaScript: https://github.com/etgryphon/stativus/
[1] See "Out of the Tarpit" for why state and complexity are closely related: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/249607/all/Out%20of%20the%20Tarpit.... (The original link is down, so I made a mirror.)
[2] The original article on statecharts: http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~dharel/SCANNED.PAPERS/Stat...
[3] More about the idea that simpler things are not necessarily easier: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy