compile programming is typically a optional CS course

This is really a shame.

It was compulsary in my program, back in the mid 80's and I am really glad it was: I remember my first thought when I read the description of the class: "what a waste of time, only Mr C and Mss Fortran need to know about this, why on Earth should I care, I use compilers, I don't write them!".

During the class I still thought it was useless but at least it was fun... unlike some other classes (COBOL anyone?). Then when I started working I soon find myself in the middle of a huge project that essentially consisted in writing 4 compilers (including one with incremental compiling, fun!) and a run time environment for an advanced test bench, then using lex/yacc to generate tests for an other project, then writing an interpreter for an SGML transformation language. Boy was I happy not to have cut that compiler class!

And I don't even mention the number of time I had to write quick and dirty interpreters for very simple languages (subsets of XPath, DB queries...). In this case I generally use regexps but at least I know what they are good for and where to stop adding features to the language because i would then need to switch to lex/yacc.

In essence any software processes input that can be defined as a language, so knowing when it makes sense to define this language and how to process it is really a great asset for a programer.

Plus it's really fun!

In reply to Re: Re: Learning about Lexing/Parsing in general form? by mirod
in thread Learning about Lexing/Parsing in general form? by r.joseph

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