A method for directly and partially automatically supporting users in creating, changing, and testing a sequence program for subsequent execution of the sequence program on a state-based machine controller, said method being executed in an integrated development environment of an electronic data processing device, the sequence program being formed by program instructions, which are selected in compliance with specifications for the semantically correct use of a number of machine-specific commands, characterised in that for a machine-specific configuration (9, 10) of the integrated development environment and for at least one machine-specific program interface, an interface agreement is stored in the integrated development environment, wherein, in the interface agreement, - a machine-specific command set having multiple commands is stored, said command set containing the operations of the machine which are available in control terms for the sequence program of the machine controller; - a set of initial states and state conditions is stored, which are present and valid at the start of execution of the sequence program; - for at least one of the commands of the machine-specific command set, a set of preconditions for executing the command is stored, which are valid before the command is executed; - for at least one of the commands of the machine-specific command set, a set of postconditions is stored, which are valid after the command is executed; and a state knowledge base is constructed in the integrated development environment, said state knowledge base assigning an item of state information, relating to the machine states present after the respective program instruction is executed as planned, to at least a portion of the program instructions of the sequence program, wherein, when the preconditions and postconditions are assigned to a command, a permissible execution order of the command is defined, and wherein, after a program instruction is changed, the state knowledge base is updated or regenerated, and this regeneration and/or update takes place including - the order of the program instructions in the sequence program, - the preconditions assigned to each command, - the postconditions assigned to each command, and furthermore, the user selects at least one program instruction of the sequence program as the reference range for a support request, and then triggers the support request, wherein the integrated development environment analyses and processes the state knowledge base within the selected reference range, in compliance with the specifications for the semantically correct use of the machine-specific commands, and displays the result of the analysis to the user on an output device. - a machine-specific command set having multiple commands is stored, said command set containing the operations of the machine which are available in control terms for the sequence program of the machine controller; - a set of initial states and state conditions is stored, which are present and valid at the start of execution of the sequence program; - for at least one of the commands of the machine-specific command set, a set of preconditions for executing the command is stored, which are valid before the command is executed; - for at least one of the commands of the machine-specific command set, a set of postconditions is stored, which are valid after the command is executed; - the order of the program instructions in the sequence program, - the preconditions assigned to each command, - the postconditions assigned to each command,