State machines should be force-fed simply because they are the simplest computational model, and if they are sufficient for a task, to use something more compli

State machines should be force-fed simply because they are the simplest computational model, and if they are sufficient for a task, to use something more complicated would be illogical. Indeed, in computer science school, they generally are force-fed, followed of course by force-feedings of push-down automata and various Turing Machines. (And if your web app is modeled as a very long tape, that is probably bad.)