Guiding learning can be a deceptive thing. Where an expert might think something is simple, the student’s journey toward understanding is filled with twists and turns the expert no longer even remembers. This is really the core challenge of teaching: how to communicate the complex when your own mind has already largely automated those early steps?
We can relate this relates to state machines. In it’s basic form, a small, simple formalism that helps structure software states and transitions between them. It sounds easy, but when you really delve into it, you realize how many things it connects to: the scope of state design, the conditions for transitions, and those invisible but significant command chains that define what actually happens in each state. If a state has no natural transition to it, it may for example make sense to combine it with another state in the machine.
The boxes and arrows in a UML diagram are just the tip of the iceberg. Students stumble where we, as experts, would stride straight to the end because we’ve forgotten what it feels like to stand at the first steps. This is something we need to revisit: a state doesn’t transition to another without an event. This simple idea seems so obvious once you get it, but there’s a deeper question hidden in it. Where do events actually come from? What defines when a transition happens? States aren’t just boxes; they are little worlds with their own rules.
Ultimately, when you start teaching this whole logic of state machines, you realize that the most important thing isn’t just the technique itself, but how it’s broken down. That breakdown is the everyday reality of a teacher and also the greatest satisfaction: seeing a student’s eyes light up in a moment of realization.
And speaking of realization, the challenges of how states, or modes, affect the design of the user interface are a whole different discussion. They bring the state machines to life and force you to think about how everything looks and feels to the end user. That alone will give me another whole session of joy and headaches.