The first parser that one writes for a real language is a big accomplishment. I remember the one I wrote for C89 back in high school, which was more annoying th

The first parser that one writes for a real language is a big accomplishment. I remember the one I wrote for C89 back in high school, which was more annoying than many because it requires writing a preprocessor as well. All of the theory and toy language parsers just don't compare to being able to parse a real language. It's a baptism of fire, and it feels great afterward. In my professional career, I have written dozens of domain-specific languages for dealing with things like asynchronous protocols, complex configuration, and even safer code generators. It's a great skill to have, and it has greatly contributed to building real products that just wouldn't be possible or wouldn't be built to such exacting quality otherwise.