> I didn't learn regular expressions for a very long time because people said they were hard.
I learned to use them long before I had any clue what a DFA was or had even heard of an accepting state. It was pretty intuitive to me that you just have to specify these patterns and it would match whatever you told it to.
When I later read more about the theory and how they were constructed in a compiler book, I wouldn't have been able to decipher a word of it if I hadn't already known how they were supposed to work.
I wonder why more books don't show you what they do before showing you how they're made.
I learned to use them long before I had any clue what a DFA was or had even heard of an accepting state. It was pretty intuitive to me that you just have to specify these patterns and it would match whatever you told it to.
When I later read more about the theory and how they were constructed in a compiler book, I wouldn't have been able to decipher a word of it if I hadn't already known how they were supposed to work.
I wonder why more books don't show you what they do before showing you how they're made.