| >but you don't need to understand the details of the regex engine in order to use them. Yes, at some point you do. Without understanding how regular expressions actually work, you can't know when it is appropriate to use them. Many things aren't possible with regular expressions and many grammars aren't parsable with regular expressions. You can either waste time trying to write an impossible regex (or write one that works on your tests, but blows up in the wild) or you can study automata theory and understand what actually goes on underneath. As for the halting problem, I'll leave you this stack overflow explanation for why it is beneficial to understand. http://cs.stackexchange.com/a/32853 Many problems in CS have already been solved, some are impossible to solve. You can either waste time on trial and error trying to reinvent the wheel or you can study the theoretical underpinnings. Do you want to spend a week trying to model a problem as a finite state machine, only to determine that finite state machine isn't powerful enough to solve your problem? Do you want to spend a month banging your head against a wall trying to solve a problem that you could have solved in 5 minutes had you realized it was just a well known graph theory problem all along? A problem that was solved decades ago. The only way to know these things is to study the theory behind what you do. Why do you think Civil Engineers are required to take physics? The difference between an Engineer and an artisan is a rigorous understanding of the formal system underpinning his work. Artisans build through trial and error and experiences, and they leave many failed projects in their wake while they gain this experience. Engineers use theory and modeling to limit the number of failed projects to the net benefit of everyone involved. |