[pthreads]

Can someone recommend me a good online course in automata theory (or even a book). I tried Ullman's course on edX (or Coursera, don't remember). But I found it a bit difficult to follow -- seemed a bit dry and monotonous, to me at least.

Had the same experience with Ullman's book (first edition at least). I have enough theoretical background in CS and am not averse to reading dense material.

[joshmarlow]

I'm assuming this was the Ullman book you took a look at - https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Automata-Languages-Compu...

If not, it's good but pretty dense. If you didn't like that, then I would recommend this one - https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Micha...

Sipser has a lot less notation and more english explanations of the concepts. I picked it up and read most of it after graduating - it's pretty easy to follow (though if I recall, I think some of the terminology around Turing complete languages differed slightly from the Ullman text).

[pthreads]

Thanks for the Sipser recommendation. Picked it up yesterday and already liking it.

[llimllib]

I love sipser, it’s one of the few textbooks I kept after college

[ricklamers]

I can highly recommend https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbtzT1TYeoMjNOGEiaRmm_vMI...

I’ve deeply enjoyed his videos and after the course in which we treated the material, regexes were all of a sudden extremely obvious. I benefit from it almost daily.

Accompanying book I would recommend: Introduction to the theory of Computing by Michael Sipser.

Credits go to TU Delft professors for architecting the course.

[brudgers]

My interest in the topic carried me through Ulman’s Corsera course...the second time back when such things were free.

Which is only relevant in the sense that what changes is our relationship to the material over time. Our interests evolve. Same our expectations.

Ulman wrote the book. It’s hard to do better than that in many of the ways that matter.