[abrgr]

Modeling workflows as state machines is incredibly powerful.

In addition to everything the author mentioned, the constraints of state machines allow a workflow platform to provide a ton of additional guarantees and capabilities around consistency, state propagation, reliable timers, inter-instance messaging, etc.

We built our workflow execution platform [1] around state machines and we've seen great results. We find our workflow code is incredibly simple and easy to understand.

[1] https://www.statebacked.dev

[manvillej]

this is exactly how I go about re-architecting overgrown workflows. reduce the workflow to a state machine. It takes forever to untangle what they are wanting to do and what they are doing, but the result is always a more robust solution.

the other benefit of a statemachine is the ability to accurately determine what parts can be collapsed into subworkflows which allows for reuse, replacement, or general modification