As seen on finding lisp (via planet lisp):
One of the most fundamental concepts in all of computer engineering is the state machine. [...]Good point.[W]hy do all popular programming languages have such poor support for representing such a foundational abstraction? The Gang of Four devote eight pages to documenting the State pattern [...]. While this is helpful, it seems to me that it would be easier to simply add some syntax to the language to help out with something this basic. Why force everybody to reimplement the same idea of states and a driver machine every time we solve a problem?
