On: Bootstrapping a Compiler

[cosmez]

i don't mind this approach, you can waste an entire day with parsing even for the simplest language, this goes right to the point.

"Parsing is mostly a distraction, because we want to study the parts of programming languages that are not parsing"

http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/Everything__We_W...

[seanmcdirmid → cosmez]

Parsing is easy, you can hand write a recursive descent parser for a reasonably sane language in a couple hours. As the joke goes, XML and Lisp are languages for those who are afraid of parsers and syntax. Though I'm not sure I would want to argue this point with Shriram.