Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: Roger L Costello Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: If I were in charge of the computer science curriculum at a college or university ... Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2022 11:54:03 +0000 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 22 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <22-06-049@comp.compilers> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="25253"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: courses, question, comment Posted-Date: 20 Jun 2022 18:08:25 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:3077 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]