Hmm. The line between the two is blurry in practice. I like to use nouns and verbs to illustrate a difference here. I think people initially approach state mac

Hmm. The line between the two is blurry in practice. I like to use nouns and verbs to illustrate a difference here. I think people initially approach state machines with noun nodes and verb edges. In practice, verbs are where most of the time is ("waiting for", "attempting to"), so you can also have a state machine where the nodes and edges are inverted. Some systems work better one way or the other.