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Message:

State Machine Idiom is the default Object Design

Posted by Bill Venners on April 11, 2000 at 9:50 PM

> I beg your pardon if here is not the right place for this question. Well, I think we can make any application using The State Machine object design, but I would like to know all the pros and contra using this design. In my job, we have applications with a lot of states and few messages and actions for each object, so I think that is suitable for using this design.

I'd just say that most objects should follow the
state machines idiom. Sometimes, however,
you want immutables and other times you may want messengers.

Unfortunately, I haven't yet written down in great detail what
I mean by these idioms. The best place to read about them is
the relevant handout from my Design Workshop seminar:

http://www.artima.com/javaseminars/modules/DesWithObjects/index.html

bv