Constructing the user interface with statecharts
by Ian Horrocks · first published 1999
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2018–2026first – last mentioned
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Not a recent book, but Ian Horrocks’ “Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts” (1999) is one of those technical books which presents an idea so clearly but also so different from my usual work that I’m just itching to try it. The essential thesis of the book is that statecharts…
on “Ask HN: Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2019?” ↗…so much easier to reason about! However, seems the traction eventually disappeared for unknown reasons, sadly. If this is the first time you're hearing about Statecharts, I highly recommend the book "Constructing the user interface with statecharts" by Ian Horrucks (https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780201342789/mode/2up) which yes, is from 1999, but probably the best introduction for how to actually apply and use Statecharts.
on “Statecharts: hierarchical state machines” ↗…want to check out are: + David Harel's original paper on the statecharts formalism (which Sketch.systems implements): http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc/2005_2006/reso... + Ian Horrock's "Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts" book: https://amzn.to/2sT1e4x It's also worth noting that Sketch.systems doesn't do any kind of formal analysis or checking of invariants. If you're interested in that sort of thing, look into TLA+…
on “Sketch.systems” ↗GUIs are one giant state machine. Tracking all those states is unwieldy. The best notation I've seen is state charts, as described by Ian Horrock in Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts. Still, it's a ton of work. As a result, everyone I've ever seen just resorts to the 80% solution of coding it up without tracking the states and then playing whack-a-mole trying to make it consistent.
on “Ask HN: Why is GUI programming so hard?” ↗…times I've seen someone on HN bring up the idea of using statecharts for UI implementation. Many years ago there was a book around this idea, but I wasn't able to get a copy before it became very rare. "Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts" https://www.amazon.com/Constructing-User-Interface-Statechar... I've always wondered if statcharts were a powerful enough abstraction to handle everything I needed, and would like to read more about…
on “Statecharts: A visual formalism for complex systems [pdf]” ↗