Systems and methods are provided for the design, development and execution of a graphical user interface using a state machine based programming paradigm integrated with a componentized graphical user interface. The present invention generates a graphical state machine representation of the graphical user interface including states for elements of the graphical user interface and any events associated with these elements. The state diagram model provides a graphical structure for handling events associated with the graphical user interface, such as events generated by inputs provided by a user via a graphical user interface element. Furthermore, functionality for the graphical user interface, such as underlying control structure, state management, and event processing can be implemented with a high level textual programming language integrated with the graphical state machine.