automaton

Anyone who knows Mike knows that he isn't some fictional automaton.

Such an automaton matches any string within the given edit distance of the word.

>I mean, I agree with you, but just because you are 'on duty' doesn't mean that you become an automaton of the state.

Without writing, you are reduced to a finite automaton.

If your job could conceivably be done by an automaton, eventually it will be.

Well, why aren't these unthinking automatons enforcing laws about the size of switch with which you can beat your wife?

But as soon as you add a second stack to a pushdown automaton, it suddenly becomes Turing complete.

Also, for complex expressions, constructing the automaton can be slow.

Since we are just automatons, that means that every job could eventually be automated.

Any string in L determines a path through the automaton; so any string with p or more characters must visit the same state twice, forming a loop.

This graph is just deterministic finite automaton[1] with some fancy rules to make it easier to remember and to draw less arrows.

Rand justified that for the reader by dehumanizing the guard as an unthinking automaton.

Take the regular language L, and express it as a deterministic finite automaton with p states.

In general, code executed by computers tends to be executed more "rigidly", but in some systems humans can also be quite automaton-like in just executing instructions.

First you introduce them to finite state automatons, then you show them a cool trick of extending the words by walking in circles on the automaton's state graph, and only then you mention that this is basically a pumping lemma.