When we taught parsing (formal language theory) we generally did so using a "Chomskian" hierarchy. In a trivial sense it would be something like: regex (finite

When we taught parsing (formal language theory) we generally did so using a "Chomskian" hierarchy. In a trivial sense it would be something like: regex (finite automata; pushdown) -> context free (CYK; LL(1); LL(k)) -> Turing reduction crap. I think it did a huge disservice to our students. It completely elided probably the three most important strategies for parsing "in practice", in order: recursive descent (RD), Pratt, and Earley. The time it spent on algorithmic reduction was insufficient to teach students the practice of translating algorithms to simpler, but more efficient, forms (parametric algorithm design). I think it's because there's not a lot of formal "meat" on RD, Pratt, and Earley — the first two are engineering solutions, and the latter is too difficult for lower-division to do the proofs. Anyways, learn Pratt and RD. That's all you need, in practice.