stateful vs stateless systems

A stateful system keeps track of its interactions over time, remembering past actions or data to inform future responses, like a phone conversation where the caller remembers previous topics. A stateless system, on the other hand, treats each interaction as independent, with no memory of past exchanges, similar to a quiz show where each question is answered without knowledge of previous ones. Statefulness is useful for applications needing continuous context, while statelessness enhances scalability and simplicity, often used in web services where each request contains all necessary information.