| This book discusses a topic that is among the central questions of software development. Therefore, we must position ourselves in that area to justify our right to express our opinion on that topic. Saying “we” implies at least one person in the co-author group. We have worked for several years in software development using various languages and development environments. We did this in large, medium, and small companies, as well as individually. We took part in projects in different positions as programmers, project leaders, managers, or consultants. We know software from the university perspective as a scientific and teaching subject. Hence, we have experienced software from several perspectives. We regularly read books and journals ranging from IEEE journals to very simple marketingcontrolled papers. This experience allows us to have a well-established opinion, which is independent of any pressure of specific professional circumstances. For instance, I have a rather bad opinion about BASIC but some co-authors did a good job with Visual Basic and see it in a better light than I; thus, we managed to find a compromise view about that issue.
Modeling Software with Finite State Machines: A Practical Approach explains how to apply finite state machines to software development. It provides a critical analysis of using finite state machines as a foundation for executable specifications to reduce software development effort and improve quality. It discusses the design of a state machine and of a system of state machines. It also presents a detailed analysis of development issues relating to behavior modeling with design examples and design rules for using finite state machines. This text demonstrates the implementation of these concepts using StateWORKS software and introduces the basic components of this software. |
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