> without a basic understanding of formal grammar, you can't read a railroad diagram nor a BNF anyway I had no trouble reading the ones in the back of my Pasca

> without a basic understanding of formal grammar, you can't read a railroad diagram nor a BNF anyway I had no trouble reading the ones in the back of my Pascal book when I was a 16-year-old high school student. I certainly did not understand formal grammars back then. I didn't even know what a formal language was. (I was using one, but that doesn't mean I understood that I was.)