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I agree completely. Anytime I’m looking at a parser library I just shake my head and close that browser tab. I’m invariably going to want a hand-rolled recursive descent parser two weeks later, so let’s just get on it.

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So much this. I've used a parser generator successfully exactly once, and even then I simply didn't care about proper error reporting.

I wouldn't mind something reusable that generated red-green trees for me a la Roslyn. I can bang out a recursive descent parser in a day, but not one that can be run after every keystroke.

There's a middle ground with parser combinators.

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