Yes, I think understanding that there's a fundamental difference between the operation of parsing a language and "naive call-and-for-loop programming" is very important. Most naive efforts to parse a language starting with no knowledge simply fail (and that can include, say, things efforts to validate a file name in a somewhat complex file system or to parse a packet in a network protocol).
In college, it took me a bit of time to understand what a formal language really was and what the difference between a parser and a simple string processor was and when I arrived in industry, I notice this were something a certain proportion of otherwise experienced programmers simply did not understand this.
In college, it took me a bit of time to understand what a formal language really was and what the difference between a parser and a simple string processor was and when I arrived in industry, I notice this were something a certain proportion of otherwise experienced programmers simply did not understand this.