I also found my theory-of-computation course in college to be a wonderful help in understanding parsing.
Being familiar with the Chomsky Hierarchy ([1]), and the kinds of language recognizers required for each level in that hierarchy, can save parser authors a lot of wasted time.
Being familiar with the Chomsky Hierarchy ([1]), and the kinds of language recognizers required for each level in that hierarchy, can save parser authors a lot of wasted time.
E.g., "regex's can't count!"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy