[jedimastert]

> I can generally write something quickly to re-create the necessary parts of the state automatically.

I think this is where the trip up is. In a game, for example, that state is often exceptionally complex and getting everything right back to where you came from is usually only possible running the full game and recreating the same state.

[westoncb]

It just doesn’t come up that often though.

In most cases it’s not hard to narrow down which aspects of state are relevant; you really only need to preserve everything for rare exceedingly subtle/deep bugs, which is a special case not a general usage kinda thing—and yet this feature is often discussed as revolutionary for programming in general.