Interesting. I use state machines all the time, mostly in FPGA's yet also in software, embedded and beyond. Yes, you do have to develop a sense of when and ho

Interesting. I use state machines all the time, mostly in FPGA's yet also in software, embedded and beyond. Yes, you do have to develop a sense of when and how to use them. One of my software techniques is to use a state machine to initially solve and understand a problem. Once done and working, you can start to chip away at the state machine, eliminate states and sometimes refactor the code into something faster or more efficient that completely eliminates the state machine. The other aspect of this is that state machines can, in some cases, add a layer of safety and failure mitigation. In the end, it really depends on the nature of the project.