State Machines and Production Pairing

8th Light Apprenticeship - Day 76

At this mornings Zagauku session Uku led a really interesting talk on state machines. Starting with the simple example of a turnstile, he worked up to how a production system, such as a booking system, or insurance system could use a state machine.

This reminded me of my old company, where an entire confirmation system was created out of 8 different state machines, all sending messages to each other. What came to both Uku and my own mind, was that tic tac toe could be implemented as a state machine, not something that I had ever thought of before. I’ve added it to my ‘Fun To Do list’, a compilation of things I will tackle after the apprenticeship is over.

What was also exciting, was that after the zagaku, Uku asked if I would like to pair on story for a client project. I jumped at the chance and found it interesting seeing a real Ruby project. I noticed that lots of modules were being used, not something that I have introduced in my tic tac toe game yet. I was pleased I could follow what Uku was explaining, and what the system did. I also saw the different views that were rendered, so I could relate that to my web project I’m working on now. A little extra excitement for the day!