I agree: take the time to learn about state machines.

I remember the first time hearing about them and being totally confused by the wikipedia page. I think the first article that made sense to me was this one, because it used a webapp example: https://www.infoq.com/articles/robust-user-interfaces-with-s...

And then developing a few sample applications, especially with Elm or another language with custom types, really completed my understanding. The diagrams and math notation are more intimidating than the actual code.