SMC - The State Machine Compiler Reviews

SMC has been invaluable to me in more than a few projects to reduce code complexity. Thanks to SMC I have been able to simplify program state behavior for programs in C++ and Java at least. This allowed for relatively linear efforts & time (v/s exponential) as program complexity grew. After searching for similar solutions many years go and again recently, SMC seems by far seems most effective!

Great to have a complete tool that... - uses the UML notation. - has language for expressing state machines in a single .sm file. - ability to generate code for lots of programming languages based on a single .sm file. - generate a visual presentation using Graphviz. Keep up the great work with this tool! I really appreciate it. :-D

very good project, thanks!

thanks man, great soft!

This is the second Finite State Machine generator I have used, and the most flexible. The first was QP, which worked well on the Windows C++ platform I was developing on in 2006. But the number of target platforms for QP is small, and this licensing is complicated. I am now using SMC for some networking logic in my iOS App ( http://dr.edgemoor.com ) and plan to expand its use for other items. Advantages: 1) Simple to use and understand 2) Fairly easy to debug. If you make a mistake in you FSM definition, it will toss a nasty run time error that will point you to what is missing. 3) I want to port my App to Android and possibly Windows Phone, and SMC will work well for this. I plan to put the maximum amount of logic into state machine definitions to make porting simpler. 4) The state charts that SMC generates are really useful. I include them in my DOxygen project documentation, and can quickly look at them to remember how things are working. Disadvantages: 1) Needs more volunteers to add to the documentation. ( Of course, I could be one of those volunteers, so I can't complain. )

I've been using SMC to implement non blocking i/o protocols, as well as manage distributed coordination in process groups. I've been using hand written FSMs for this previously, and I was amazed at how much simpler, correct, and more importantly _understandable_ these systems have become after using SMC. Just having the FSM definition in one place, not to mention HTML and DOT generated documentation is a HUGE advantage. Most excellent stuff. And now that Javascript is supported... :)

good job

I use SMC state machines to manage stock orders posted on exchanges. These are real orders on real exchanges and SMC tracks the order life cycle without a hitch.

I have been using this tool for years (starting with Bob Martin's original implementation), and it has become absolutely indispensable.

Very good job. I used it because of gvSIG CAD tools and after the reading of the tutorial (very accurate) I was able to work with it and do very nice things!

SMC is very easy to learn and use. I'm sucessfully using it in industrial applications. It is extremely lightweight from deployment and runtime point of view.