Hacker News new | comments | apply | show | ask | jobs | submit login Compiling an application for use in highly radio-active environments ( stackoverflow.com ) 303 points by ingve 4 hours ago | past | web | 54 comments exabrial 39 minutes ago I remember learning in my embedded programming class about state machines and how certain states cannot be reached. In the lab, I accounted for every possible valid state with a transition out to another state. I left my microcontroller running when I went to get lunch, came back and it was frozen. I did a dump, and discovered it was idling in a state that has no entry into it, and because I had no exit, it would just sit there. I 'fixed' the problem by adding a transition to reset the controller from every state that shouldn't be reached. reply tgamblin 1 hour ago Another place this use case comes up is s...