State Machines
FSM fundamentals, implementation patterns, event-driven design, and hierarchical state machines
4 topics
Core firmware design skill — every protocol parser is an FSM
State Machines
foundational
FSM Fundamentals
States, events, transitions, and actions: the mental model for finite state machines, plus Mealy vs Moore and why FSMs beat nested if/switch.
state-machines
fsm
mealy
moore
+2
Interview Weight: 5/10
State Machines
intermediate
Event-Driven State Machines
Move from polling to event-driven FSMs: RTOS queue dispatch, run-to-completion, ISR safety, and the active-object pattern.
state-machines
fsm
event-driven
rtos
+2
Interview Weight: 4/10
State Machines
intermediate
FSM Patterns in C
Three implementation patterns for FSMs in C — switch-case, table-driven, function-pointer table — with trade-offs and a folded-in section on testing FSMs.
state-machines
fsm
c-patterns
table-driven
+2
Interview Weight: 4/10
State Machines
advanced
Hierarchical State Machines
How nested states + behavioral inheritance solve the state-explosion problem; UML statecharts, the QP framework, and when an HSM is justified over a flat FSM.
state-machines
hsm
hierarchical
uml-statechart
+2
Interview Weight: 3/10