What Are the Chances of You Creating a Programming Language?
Even if your school adopted a different textbook for the Compiler Principles course, the concept of DFA is a cornerstone that you can't forget. Or does it? 😄
If this course were not compulsory for our major, I doubt how many students would choose to take it. Not only is it challenging to learn, but also from a pragmatic perspective:
Therefore, the motivation for many students is just to pass the exam and to get the credit. Some of them ended up getting a good score on the final exam due to the excessive practice of manual deduction of the regular expression, NFA, DFA, BNF, etc. However, few of them are acutally interested in how a programming language is constructed from the ground.
I also had that doubt too. But for me, it was the first time I ever felt the science part of my major. To be honest, I never expected to have the opportunity to create a language either. However, somehow it did attract me to learn it rather than pass it. Perhaps it's because I feel relieved to understand the principles behind the tools I'll likely use throughout my career.
During my last year of graduate school, I was lucky to get an internship at Microsoft. The even more lucky part is that the team I joined was building a new DSL(Domain Specific Language) for protocol.
