[wwweston]

Hi, my name is Weston, and I'm bad at parsing (and it hurts the whole time I do it because I'm just barely clever enough to do it badly/dangerously).

What else should I study besides the first 5 chapters of the 2nd edition of the dragon book?

[kaba0]

Well - do you want to be good at parsing/has any need for it? Even if you write your own programming language you are much better off using something like ANTLR to generate your grammar — the advantage is a well-specified standard description of your own grammar and no parser bugs.

Though mind you, not everyone shares my sentiment here, last time I wrote that people were adamant about hand-written parsers.

[turndown]

An easy to reach for activity that usually involves parsing is stuff like Advent of Code, where there is almost always a parsing step.

[eska]

Sorry if I misinterpreted your comment, but the last sentence reads like a snark. Why did you have to go from “the basics” to “read half a compiler book”? Most developers don’t even seem to read a single Wikipedia article on it.