That was how I was as well until I got tasked with making feature rich text inputs (decorate hashtags, user tags, replace names with emails, vice versa). At a c

That was how I was as well until I got tasked with making feature rich text inputs (decorate hashtags, user tags, replace names with emails, vice versa). At a certain point it gets too difficult to respond to user input as it is just too variable (user highlights 40 chars and presses ‘A’? user pastes 100 chars?). A bulletproof method is running find and replace when needed and the ideal way to do that is regex. Forcing myself to get tough regex working is what really made me grasp some of the more advanced concepts that unlock regex. It’s mainly just that we never need regex, and if you use it for a simple task you’re a jerk for introducing unnecessary complexity. Why would people learn it?