[tp3]

The code is obviously much simpler than its syntax - most importantly, its syntactical simplicity makes it way easier to deal with. So when you write the code to parse it you don't have to try to parse it in one fell swoop like you do in Whitequark.

So you can't read anything from a method call! I can make it so, if you're doing a class method (of any kind) you have to invoke the constructor, as described in "What is a method?" There's also a few new techniques like "new_class_method", which requires creating an object (of some kind) for that class... but what about that? It's not "I've just fixed Tree-sitter's problem"; it's that Tree-sitter hasn't yet resolved the problem yet - there are other parsing problems besides Tree-sitter in Ruby itself like those of classes (and classes are not part of Tree-sitter) and things that are known as "type-traits" and so on - so as it's not quite enough it can be done by other things. The reason for using LR grammar is that when it comes to this - what do I want from that grammar?

The point I'm making here is that LR doesn't give a reason for what you're doing. As a programmer you are trying to write code that is portable because - if it works in a domain you don't understand (such as Ruby) - then you don't know what you're doing is wrong. There can be a domain (as in any language) that's a lot more complex than this - but since we've got that, how can I be sure it won't mess up the code I'm writing?

[chrisseaton]

> The code is obviously much simpler than its syntax

What code? The parser? How can it be simpler than its syntax? It has syntax and semantics, which is strictly more than the syntax.

> The point I'm making here is that LR doesn't give a reason for what you're doing.

What do you mean 'what you're doing'?