The LabHSM toolkit features:
Active objects - much better and natural modeling of the real life objects than traditional OOP objects.
Universal messaging system - post events to self, send them to another object on the same system or across the world.
Powerful Hierarchical State Machine (HSM) paradigm, free of the limitations of a traditional, "flat" finite state machine, namely, combinatorial state space explosion and the lack of ability to consider the behavior logic on different levels of abstraction.
All the information about behavior of an active object is abstracted into a set of data structures and stored in an external file - no spaghetti or deeply nested code anymore!
Design is code! Modified behavior becomes code automatically as soon as the HSM file is saved.
A universal template provides code structure that stays the same regardless of specific functionality. So all the code has basically the same look and feel.
The diagram structure does not have to change whenever you change the behavior.
Squeeze more functionality into your VIs without creating more mess.
Code reuse within the same VI. The same segments of code (actions) can be scheduled to run in different transitions in a mix and match fashion, even more than once in a single transition if desired.
Behavioral inheritance allows substates to define only differences in behavior from their superstates. Inherit, augment actions, or completely override in a substate transitions defined in its superstates.
Transitions can be defined to lead to the target state itself, its lowest default substate, or its history or even deep history, which enables even more concise HSM description (fewer states needed).
Ready to use external timer functions. Call a timer creation function and let the timer send events to your active object just like other regular active objects do.
Actions queue and a prioritized private Events queue provide a Run To Completion execution free of concurrency hazards.
A separate public Message queue to ensure encapsulation principle is always observed.
A powerful specialized editor for creating and modifying external behavior data files.