Learn Regex The Hard Way
regex.learncodethehardway.org
Learn Regex The Hard Way
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Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#2[deleted]
Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#3Not to sound like a pretensions CS guy ... but how can you have a book on regular expressions without even mentioning DFA/NFA? Maybe its just me, but (back in my day) I found learning about finite automata made regex just click.
Edit: ahh, I see now mentioned in intro that "I'm going to be very practical and straight forward about it. No NFA to DFA conversion. No crazy explanations of push down finite state automata." :) I still argue that thinking of regex as state machines is a very useful tool.
Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#4The (?i) is a confusing part of that example expression, and I don't see why it's necessary.
Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#5What do you guys think of Zed Shaw's teaching style? As I'm not a beginner programmer, I can't really evaluate correctly — to me it seems like a odd approach to programming pedagogy, but perhaps it works. Any non-programmers want to shed light on why his style works?
Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#6just decided to randomly click a chapter. in 12.1 wouldn't
^[0-9]+|[A-Z]+$ in fact need to be written as
^([0-9]+|[A-Z]+)$ or non-capturing
^(?:[0-9]+|[A-Z]+)$
i doubt the intent was to alternate NL/EOL assertion. seems like a novice oversight and does not instill confidence in the rest of the material.
or am i missing something?
Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#7Not to sound like a pretensions CS guy ... but how can you have a book on regular expressions without even mentioning DFA/NFA? Maybe its just me, but (back in my day) I found learning about finite automata made regex just click. Edit: ahh, I see now mentioned in intro that "I'm going to be very practical and straight forward about it. No NFA to DFA conversion. No crazy explanations of push down finite state automata.…
I'm not a CS graduate. I first learned of state machine from an article posted here on HN a few months ago.
I learned regular expression from the regular-expression.info site and from the first 4 chapters of Jeffrey Friedl's book over 5 years ago. I don't recall an introduction to NFA/DFA from them either. I'm pretty comfortable with regex and use them regularly (no pun intended) and so far, I don't feel that I've missed much.
I'm not disagreeing with your view, but I think it's worth pointing out from someone having developed an understanding of regex from a different perspective, that NFA/DFA might not be such a strong prerequisite and people should not feel like they're going in at a disadvantage.
Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#8Not to sound like a pretensions CS guy ... but how can you have a book on regular expressions without even mentioning DFA/NFA? Maybe its just me, but (back in my day) I found learning about finite automata made regex just click. Edit: ahh, I see now mentioned in intro that "I'm going to be very practical and straight forward about it. No NFA to DFA conversion. No crazy explanations of push down finite state automata.…
I'm a CS graduate, and I read the Friedl book on regular expressions in high school. I don't seem to remember learning anything about automata from it, and I know for certain that my automata course in university didn't make me any more competent at understanding or applying regular expressions.
Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#9What do you guys think of Zed Shaw's teaching style? As I'm not a beginner programmer, I can't really evaluate correctly — to me it seems like a odd approach to programming pedagogy, but perhaps it works. Any non-programmers want to shed light on why his style works?
My brother is working through Learn Ruby The Hard Way, which is not written by Zed, but is based on his Python book. He has no programming experience and seems to be enjoying the work and learning Ruby pretty quickly.
Re: Learn Regex The Hard Way
#10What do you guys think of Zed Shaw's teaching style? As I'm not a beginner programmer, I can't really evaluate correctly — to me it seems like a odd approach to programming pedagogy, but perhaps it works. Any non-programmers want to shed light on why his style works?
as a Python dev I scanned the python book and I thought it dwelled too much on string formatting, focused on teaching syntax and not programming, and the language was a bit terse.
but then a friend of mine told me that he and a few other people he knew learnt python from that book, so either later revisions got better or my opinion is shit.