I tend to think of state machines as becoming important when you're forced to deal with the unpredictably of the real world, rather than just pummeling bits unt

I tend to think of state machines as becoming important when you're forced to deal with the unpredictably of the real world, rather than just pummeling bits until they repent. You've got some complicated Thing to control which you don't have full visibility into... Like, say, a Bluetooth implementation, or a robot. You have a task to complete, which goes through many steps, and requires some careful reset operations before you can try again when things inevitably don't go according to plan. What steps are needed for the reset depends on where you're at in the process. Maybe you only need to retry from there steps ago instead of going all the way back to the beginning... The states help you keep track of where things are at, and more rigorously define the paths available.