If I were in charge of the computer science curriculum at a college or university ...

From	Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	If I were in charge of the computer science curriculum at a college or university ...
Date	2022-06-19 11:54 +0000
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<22-06-049@comp.compilers> (permalink)

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Hi Folks,

If I were in charge of the computer science curriculum at a college or
university I would require students to first take a course on how to create
lexers and parsers using a parser generator (e.g., Flex and Bison) before
taking a course on compilers.

For the last many months I have been immersed in learning Flex and Bison
(great fun!). Recently I have started reading the dragon compiler book. As I
read it, I come across things in it and think "Ah, that's why Flex/Bison does
that." But I also come across things and think "Oh man, I never would have
understood what that is saying if I didn't know Flex/Bison."  The dragon book
is filling in gaps in my understanding of Flex/Bison, while simultaneously
Flex/Bison is filling in gaps in the dragon book's explanation. Synergy!

I believe that some of you are on the faculty at colleges and universities. Is
this how your curriculum works?

/Roger
[When I was teaching a compilers course back in the late 1970s I talked about
lex and flex when we covered regular expressions and DFAs, and about yacc when
we covered LR parsing. They're just tools, not worth a separate course. -John]

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If I were in charge of the computer science curriculum at a college or university ... Roger L Costello <costello@mitre.org> - 2022-06-19 11:54 +0000
  Re: If I were in charge of the computer science curriculum at a college or university ... gah4 <gah4@u.washington.edu> - 2022-06-20 16:16 -0700

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