What is State in programming?

I often hear the term “state” being used when describing objects in a program, or even programs entirely, and decided to do a bit of research to get some clarity. I found a few helpful articles and videos (see bottom of post) which brought me to the following conclusion: The concept of State in programming refers to the value of all variables that determine the status or condition of the program or object in question. With this in mind I came up with the following analogy of a coffee maker (somehow most things in my life revolve around coffee ☕️). So in the image below, the coffee maker’s state is “power = on” and “status = brewing”. Also important to note that state can change based on both internal or external events, such as the user turning off the coffee maker, or it finishing the brewing process.

Illustration of a coffee maker to describe state in programming
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An important lesson for learning to code