[antlr-interest] A postmortem of my use of antler

[Richard Clark]

Hi there,
You brought up a really good idea -- a "what can you use this for" document
that shows a handful of common uses. I also want to think about how to
improve the initial learning pieces on the Wiki.

A handful of thoughts from an old hand (who wrote or edited a bunch of intro
material on the Wiki):
1. We could probably get enough up on the Wiki to help someone make an
initial evaluation of ANTLR, but developing with it pretty much requires
buying the book from the Pragmatic Programmers. (Which it sounds like you've
done, thank you. I could make that requirement clearer on the Wiki.)
2. Really understanding what's going on sometimes requires a look at the
generated code and/or the runtime support classes. I understand you .Net
folks are dealing with a bit of a black box there.
3. Compiler construction and its cousins Lexing and Parsing are *hard*. If
you think the ANTLR documentation is challenging, try reading Aho, Sethi,
and Ullman. There's a balance between setting people's expectations and
scaring them away. On the other hand, I appreciate constructive
conversations about helping people get started. (I got my start teaching
software development courses and I'm still partial to the newcomers. :) )
4. ANTLR is a professional-grade power tool. The difference between making a
clean cut and taking your hand right off is pretty small. You don't need to
know a lot to write a straightforward "parse this and do that..." kind of
program (though more examples would help), but the next step up is a pretty
big one.

We could all use some brainstorming on a handful of transitional steps. We
could probably use some examples in C# and other languages. (The bulk of the
Wiki examples, including some very detailed tutorials, is in Java.)

Thanks for the feedback,

...Richard
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