ifandelse / machina.js

js ex machina - finite state machines in JavaScript
http://machina-js.org/
Other
1.93k stars 147 forks source link

Repo Status (tl;dr - `Alive`) :-) #146

Open ifandelse opened 6 years ago

ifandelse commented 6 years ago

Hi there - if you've landed here because you're wondering "what the heck is up with the machina author....is he alive and maintaining this...." - the short answer is yes, I am, and have some updates & cleanup planned.

The long answer to that question is "life is up"! When I started writing OSS many years ago, I was a new father with one child and one on the way and was just another dev on a team. Now I have 3 boys, I lead a product development team of 16 people, I've moved (several times), have gotten sucked into other really cool hobbies (I built my own 3D printer, for example), and more. To top it off, about a year and a half ago my team embarked on an ambitious project to replace 90% of our UI with a new stack - but avoiding the classic pitfalls of "The Big Rewrite™". It was AMAZING - but it demanded every bit of focus I had. Throw in some camping trips, a company acquisition, a close family member passing away and so many more things, and before you know it...the issues from 2015 that I kept starting to answer are now 2+ years old.

Working for a company that advocates for lean principles, limiting WIP is a big deal to me. Combine that with reading books like Essentialism & Deep Work, it's no surprise that I've been very selective about where my time goes. However, machina is a labor of love - and it's due for lots of attention. It has been such a workhorse for me and my team...and while I've been quiet on this repo, we've been using it a lot in our product work.

If you've reached out and not heard back from me - I'm truly sorry. I know it's frustrating to have questions or requests for changes unanswered. I intend to address bugs, and hope that any enhancements I add to this project are a boon to you. I plan to keep this project tightly focused on its original intent: a practical FSM abstraction in JavaScript. I want to make hierarchical FSMs easier to use, and I plan to update/rip out dependencies where I can. I can't promise I can make every change requested of me - but I an honored that anyone has found this lib useful outside of myself. Thanks!

-Jim