Sometimes I with that intro to compilers books placed a bigger emphasis on recursive descent. Recursive descent works anywhere, without dependencies to external tools such as Bison or ANTLR. I hope that this book marks the start of a trend.
Sure, everyone should learn about LR parsers at some point. But I'd argue that outside a compiler class, knowing recursive descent is likely to be useful more often than knowing LR parsing.
Sure, everyone should learn about LR parsers at some point. But I'd argue that outside a compiler class, knowing recursive descent is likely to be useful more often than knowing LR parsing.