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Stop writing CLI validation. Parse it right the first time

(hackers.pub)
203 points dahlia | 1 comments | 06 Sep 25 18:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.328s | source
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yakshaving_jgt ◴[06 Sep 25 21:46 UTC] No.45153163[source]▶
I've noticed that many programmers believe that parsing is some niche thing that the average programmer likely won't need to contend with, and that it's only applicable in a few specific low-level cases, in which you'll need to reach for a parser combinator library, etc.

But this is wrong. Programmers should be writing parsers all the time!

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1. dkubb ◴[06 Sep 25 22:18 UTC] No.45153402[source]▶
The three most common things I think about when coding are DAGs, State Machines and parsing. The latter two come up all the time in regexps which I probably write at least once a day, and I’m always thinking about state transitions and dependencies.