[HN Gopher] State Machine in Real Life
___________________________________________________________________
State Machine in Real Life
Author : ColinWright
Score : 46 points
Date : 2022-10-01 09:19 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.solipsys.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.solipsys.co.uk)
| hyperhopper wrote:
| Why does every article waste my time with a backstory?
|
| What did the hotel have to do with the restaurant?
|
| Just start with the workings of the restaurant. I don't care
| about you and your wife's travel plans.
| taberiand wrote:
| This is a slice of life story, inconsequential and only
| interesting because it provides the supplemental details
| (including the technical insight into the state machine);
| there's no point complaining about those things you don't care
| about.
|
| Also, you're complaining about two short sentences. Just to put
| things into perspective.
| cntainer wrote:
| Not all writers apply the "Chekhov's gun" principle.
|
| Inconsequential details can be fun in stories but they're not
| always appreciated, especially not in non-fiction.
| cntainer wrote:
| I guess it makes sense if the place is huge/hectic and you want
| to "industrialize" the serving of food while reducing mistakes
| (wrong table, wrong order, kitchen mixed orders, etc).
|
| It sounds "cool" when you say that the transitions between states
| can be handled by anyone on staff with this type of system but it
| would also feel impersonal if you have 4 different people
| handling each state: take order, pay, bring food, ask feedback.
| jackblemming wrote:
| A decent example. The phrasing at the end as if the author is
| some kind of clever hacker who "broke the system" was kind of
| odd.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Really? That's how you read it?
|
| Huh. That's not what I meant. What I meant was that the process
| was intended to flow through a particular sequence, and that I
| made it flow through a different and unintended sequence. In a
| sense I stopped it from working as it was intended, so in a
| sense I "broke" it.
|
| I don't know how else to say that, and certainly I didn't
| intend to imply what you seem to have inferred.
|
| Language is weird.
|
| <fx: shrug />
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Two different ways of thinking, English versus American, I
| suspect.
|
| I read it as an expression of a sense of wonder.
| eevilspock wrote:
| It is because you as the author can't see how it looks from
| the outside. There is a smugness[1], and a characterization
| of the staff as cogs in a machine that you were able to
| manipulate like cogs in your experiment.
|
| How did you "stop it from working"? You even admit "they
| didn't mind".
|
| If anything, what you really showed is that your analogy,
| while interesting and amusing, has limited accuracy. The
| concept of a state machines is precisely that, about
| machines. Not humans. The human staff took notice of the
| unexpected flow, externally manifest their on-the-fly
| adaptive mental processing of it on their faces, and then
| adapted. The restaurant didn't devolve into chaos.
|
| The staff didn't freeze and lie down on the floor like
| driverless cars are doing on the streets[2]. The fact that
| automation of anything complex and unpredictable as driving
| isn't built on anything even vaguely akin to a state machine
| is telling. That would lead to disaster.
|
| In other words, you didn't break anything at all. It was your
| analogy that got broken.
|
| ---
|
| [1]: You display this smugness even in your reply, "Language
| is weird. <fx: shrug />". Just sayin. As an writer who posted
| his work on HN himself looking for feedback should humbly
| listen to negative reactions as much as if not more so than
| seek to bask in admiration and success.
|
| [2]:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/technology/driverless-
| car...
| humanistbot wrote:
| I also felt the last part comes off as smug and also
| clickbait-y. Techie tries to prove that they're smarter than
| restaurant workers by 'breaking' their system.
| ColinWright wrote:
| Really?
|
| That was never the intent. Seriously, I'm honestly find it
| hard (for which read impossible) to read it that way.
|
| I'll re-think it.
|
| I'm genuinely baffled, but if that's what you feel, I'm
| there will be others who that way too, so I'll see if I can
| express what I mean more clearly.
|
| _Edit: I 've changed it somewhat, so the comments here are
| not necessarily relevant any more. Maybe it's no better ...
| don't know._
| woojoo666 wrote:
| The sentence they are most likely talking about:
|
| > It was apparent on the faces of the staff that this was
| most unexpected ... members of the public weren't
| supposed to know how the system worked ... how could I
| possibly have known ?!?
|
| Implies that you know more (about the system) than the
| public. The problem is you are assuming you know why the
| waiters were shocked. You also don't need the last
| sentence, it's implied by the first two. Here's an
| alternative version:
|
| > it seemed like the waiters were shocked. I'd wager that
| the general public wasn't supposed to know how the system
| worked
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Editing something in the middle of a discussion about it
| seems counterproductive to me. Now that I have read this
| comment I am uncertain whether my own other comment makes
| sense.
|
| At least leave the original in place but struck out.
| eevilspock wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20221001092029/https://www.so
| lip...
| ColinWright wrote:
| Leaving the original in place but struck out is really
| hard on the platform I'm using. Possible, but non-
| trivial, and it seemed better simply to "fix" it for
| anyone reading it later. If it was mis-leading then I
| wanted to fix it. I do, by the way, agree that it might
| be a difference between cultures. Some things don't
| translate and come across differently.
|
| For reference, at the end the original read:
|
| _It was apparent on the faces of the staff that this was
| most unexpected ... members of the public weren 't
| supposed to know how the system worked ... how could I
| possibly have known ?!?_
|
| _But it was a real-life example of a finite-state
| machine, beautifully designed, and extremely effective._
|
| _Until I did something unexpected, of course. But they
| didn 't seem to mind too much._
|
| ================
|
| Edit: I wish people didn't down-vote you, I think your
| comment is perfectly reasonable.
| kangalioo wrote:
| Your edited version is good. Conveys the feeling of the
| situation well without seeming smug at all
| ColinWright wrote:
| Thank you.
| 6510 wrote:
| My joke with the scripted humans is to rush the process: When
| they come to ask if everything is okay you answer the
| question before they ask it "everything is okay!" and hand
| them the table number. They usually find it amusing.
| flobosg wrote:
| FWIW, I understood it as literally breaking (interrupting?
| halting?) a machine by mistake.
| pizza wrote:
| Why - you think it wasn't clever enough to be called clever
| hacking? :)
| henrydark wrote:
| I once noticed a similar state machine in a restaurant I used to
| patronize.
|
| Instead of taking table numbers, they would bring toothpicks when
| coming to ask if everything is Ok.
|
| The way I upset the system was to hide the toothpicks. The waiter
| passed by a few minutes later, scanned the table as they walked,
| then suddenly stopped, took a good look at the table, seemed to
| be thinking and trying to remember, "didn't I already give them
| toothpicks? I guess not" they must have thought to themselves as
| they rushed off. Not a minute later they came back, put
| toothpicks on the table and asked if everything was OK, still
| with a somewhat confused expression on their face.
|
| But then* they went home that night, already decided that they
| can't make such a mistake again. For the next two decades they
| researched memory, neurology, AI, computer vision, machine-human
| interfaces, and everything else they needed - in order to install
| a chip in their head that will always know if they had already
| put the toothpicks or not. After 23 years of work, they went back
| to weighting on tables, with the chip in their head, satisfied
| that they had done alright, at least as much as the customers
| with the service.
|
| * the asterisk divides the comment into two halfs: true and
| untrue.
| ashergill wrote:
| I believe that Nando's does the same thing. They always take the
| table number after asking you if everything's okay.
|
| Interestingly, just as in technical systems, problems arise from
| trying to keep the state consistent between two separate systems
| (the table and the kitchen, in this case). At the table, the
| 'Waiting for Food' state is indicated by the presence of the
| table number, but in the kitchen, this state is indicated by the
| presence of a slip of paper with your order on it.
|
| In my experience, it's quite common for the kitchen to misplace
| your order slip, so the two states get out of sync. To the
| kitchen, it looks like you've got your food (or you don't exist),
| but at the table, there's no food so no one checks on you.
| janci wrote:
| Much better than the vietnamese bistro at our office's building.
| You take an empty tray. They ask you what you'll have of hundred
| of combinations of rice, noodles and meat. Then you go to the
| cash register and they ask you what you have ordered to ring you
| up. You go sit at a table with your empty tray. Some time later
| you hear some yelling. You get (probably) your food, usually
| different from what you ordered.
| ldjb wrote:
| Seems like a good idea. Anyone who has ever eaten at a Nando's
| will be familiar with this system.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-01 23:01 UTC)