[stcredzero]

I've seen good patterns for state machines in Smalltalk with states as objects and states as methods (on an FSM object).

With states as methods, you have an instance variable for "state" and you just run a loop:

    [ self state == #final ]
        whileFalse:
            [self getNextInput.
            self state: (self perform: self state)]

Each method then becomes a concise description of the state transitions:

    code
        self atEndOfInput 
            ifTrue: 
                [^#final].           "Go to #final State"
        self input == $"
            ifTrue: 
                [ self writeToOutput.
                ^#insideComment].    "Go to #insideComment"
        ^#code                       "Stay in #code"
    
    insideComment
        self input == $" 
            ifTrue: 
                [^#code].            "Go to to #code"
        ^#insideComment              "Stay in #insideComment"

Then debugging just becomes a matter of putting breakpoints in methods. #perform: is almost as fast a a regular message send, and the methods themselves are mostly #ifTrue: statements, which are bytecode optimized, so this is mostly JIT-ed to machine code.