I didn't say "states", I said "nominal states". These are the states that you would bother to name. They'll correspond to classes in an OOP language or discriminated unions in an ML-stye FP language.

Using your example, you'd have two states: `PrepareDeleteUser` and `DeleteUser` where the latter is only reachable from the former. PrepareDeleteUser will check that the all preconditions are satisfied (e.g. that the current operator has permission to delete the user). Now, you may not choose to reify these states so directly (i.e. you'll just have a deleteUser function that does a check for the preconditions), but they must exist in a robust application nonetheless.

In REST we name our states so we can drive the state machine by using the names (following hyperlinks). Why? Because, among other things, this keeps the client decoupled from the server by letting the client be in control of when to effect a state transition, but keeps the server in charge of what transitions are possible.

I need to attend to some real-life concerns at the moment, but I hope to get back to this discussion soon.

Cheers!