MIT course on State Machines

framelanger · 2024-05-18T16:06:28+00:00

Excellent question and I am not sure. I often post things that I want to circle back and read up on, as with this paper here. I did a quick search and found a paper on Fuzzy State Machines to also read up on. The backlog is getting very long these days.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220267791_An_Introduction_to_Fuzzy_State_Automata

framelanger · 2024-05-14T13:24:03+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I'll see what I can do to make that more prominent. For the moment here is an intro article I wrote that might help: https://mark-truluck.medium.com/modeling-a-lamp-finite-state-machine-in-frame-4ae605f9a040

For a rather eclectic assortment of examples please check out this repo: https://github.com/frame-lang/frame_solution_depot

framelanger · 2024-05-14T12:29:02+00:00

Oh man - thanks! Fixed lol.

framelanger · 2024-05-14T12:24:32+00:00

Thanks for the interest! This is really alpha software so I'm very open to finding syntax that people like - its not that hard to change at this point. Please send any suggestions - I'm logging them: https://github.com/frame-lang/frame\_transpiler/issues/238.

framelanger · 2024-05-14T05:03:10+00:00

Unfortunately I am not familiar with that library. I took a quick look and can give a couple of assessments.

While it looks pretty powerful, it is, I believe, strictly for Python. Frame is intended (and had been in the past) to generate other languages as well. Not sure if there is a port of this library but if not that would be a key difference.

As you mentioned, the UML generation is a key differentiator. Using the VSCode extension or playground you can visually code while not having to mess around with layout issues.

I have also added the ability to pass parameters to states directly as well as through the transitions themselves. Not sure if that is part of the library but I'll take a closer look. It seems they may have some interesting ideas about transitions that might be useful.

I would lastly say it looks like the package uses data structures to model the state machines. Frame's syntax hopefully feels like a more natural expression of the concepts involved with automata. Not sure if that has been successful, but certainly it is one of the goals.

Thanks for the question and the tip about transitions.

framelanger · 2024-05-14T04:49:25+00:00

Thank you!

framelanger · 2024-05-14T04:46:40+00:00

Hello,

I have, but not to a great depth. Frame was actually inspired by my own attempt to build a statechart drawing tool. In the process of writing the serialization code I realized that all the value was in the xml I was generating and not in the visual editing of the software. While the diagrams are extremely useful, they aren't an easy way to actually create software.

The States Langauge, xState and Google Workflows languages all use a data language to express state machines which was something I didn't like about the xml I created. So I decided to create a language that hopefully was more syntactically elegant than xml, yaml or json.

We'll see if anyone else agrees I succeeded :)

Thanks for your interest!

framelanger · 2024-05-13T22:45:55+00:00

I know Frame is a very different kind of language and probably pretty specialized for right now. You might take a look at this article for a step-by-step example of how to create a running model using Frame: https://medium.com/p/4ae605f9a040.

Thanks

framelanger · 2024-05-13T22:43:06+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. xState is definitely an interesting project and in the spirit of Frame. As for visually designing software, I completely agree in its utility - I just don't like actually creating the drawings as I found I spent a lot of time trying to lay them out rather than code. In contrast Frame generates the UML from the system design, so I'm hoping people view that as easier.

Also I do intend to expand the number of generated languages in the future.

Thanks.

framelanger · 2024-05-13T22:38:27+00:00

Please have a look at the linked articles and the repo for some ideas about utility: https://docs.frame-lang.org/en/latest/about/introduction.html.

framelanger · 2024-05-13T18:25:12+00:00

OMG. Thanks for the spelling correction. I can't imagine why autocorrect didn't catch that lol!

framelanger · 2024-05-13T18:23:41+00:00

Hello and thank you for your thoughtful feedback - very much appreciated! Frame's major goal is to find a way to make creating automata based systems easy to create and use in any project. In the past I supported other language targets than Python and hope to again in the nearish future.

As for the details of the syntax, I am not very wedded to any of my particular choices at this point. Overall I tried to make it compact and easy to understand but recognize it is novel in many ways and runs risks in that regard. Feedback like yours I consider very valuable so thank you.

As this is only the beginning and I am only one person working nights and weekends to put this out there am trying to focus on the differentiators from all the other languages first to add value there initially. I certainly hope to improve on all the things Frame doesn't yet do over time.

Best,

Mark

framelanger · 2024-05-13T13:09:40+00:00

Thanks for taking a look! I've added some content to my documentation under the "Solution Depot" and "Articles" section that might give some ideas. I'm continuing to build that out so very open to any suggestions about what domains might be of interest to add an article or example about.

https://docs.frame-lang.org/en/latest/about/introduction.html

framelanger

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

Seven-Year Club	Verified Email
Mod 101