1 HN user recommended this talk1 month2016–2023score 1
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Mentioned as a great talk and related reading in threads on parsing techniques.
A Stanford talk by Matthew Might on parsing with derivatives, a new way to write parsers, and why better parsing tools are needed. It discusses language theory and criticizes ad-hoc hand-written parsers.
“he also gave a great talk on parsing with derivatives” (HN, 2018)
Yes, I'm scanning the original video introducing derivatives[1]. The need for parsing is ubiquitous yet, Never mind CS students, in my experiences a significant number of professional programmers cannot create a basic parser either from scratch or from a standard tool. Edit: The video picks on hand-written c parser. Such a thing isn't necessarily bad IF it's in a formally derived recursive descent parser. But just ad-hoc parsing without being informed by a grammar is pretty much waiting for disaster. [1] [this video]
Introduces parsing with derivatives and critiques ad-hoc parsing.
In addition to this, I always think about Matt Might's "Parsing with Derivatives." [1] I'll have to read about flap, as it seems to utilize a lexer based on derivatives. [1]: [this video]
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.
Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed
3 Hacker News comments
From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.
Citations, criticism and jokes