State Machine
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
A state machine is a system that can be in one of a defined set of states, transitioning between them based on inputs. Think of a traffic light: Green → Yellow → Red → Green. In cloud terms, it's the engine behind workflow orchestrators — your order starts as 'pending,' moves to 'processing,' then 'shipped' or 'cancelled.' No skipping steps, no invalid states.
Real Talk
A state machine is a computational model consisting of a finite set of states, transitions between those states, and actions. In cloud computing, state machines power services like AWS Step Functions and Azure Durable Functions to coordinate workflows. They provide visual representation, error handling, retry logic, and guaranteed execution semantics.
When You'll Hear This
"The order fulfillment workflow is modeled as a state machine in Step Functions." / "State machines make it impossible to reach an invalid state — the transitions enforce the rules."
Related Terms
CQRS
CQRS says: the way you write data and the way you read data should be separate systems. Writing (commands) goes to one model optimized for transactions.
Orchestration
Orchestration is the process of automatically managing, coordinating, and scheduling where your containers run.
Workflow Engine
A workflow engine executes a series of steps in a defined order, handling branching, retries, timeouts, and failures.