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Yes, yes they are. I've used them successfully for various parsing projects. And in fact Bison recently picked up GLR parsing to deal with multiple options (https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/manual/bison.html#General...).

But for something even more fun, I suggest you check out Marpa (https://jeffreykegler.github.io/Marpa-web-site/). It is, by far, the nicest parsing tool I have ever worked with. Being able to parse ANY BNF is huge. And the state tables for debugging! Knowing what possibilities you have makes things way easier. Especially for getting stuck in an ambiguous spot of your grammer. Finally, using ruby slippers to get out of a tight spot is hugely useful.

My one complaint is that the only implementation is in Perl. The core engine is written in C though, so someday I would like to convert the Perl into Python. I started several months ago, and haven't been able to get back to it. (https://github.com/srathbun/pyMarpa)


Oh, and I found something new and fun for Marpa just now! It seems there's already the beginnings of a Python port (https://github.com/rns/libmarpa-bindings/blob/master/python/...) available.


That's a shame. I've used portableApps and it is a nice piece of software.


I would guess you aren't thinking in the language in question. You are translating your native language sentence into the appropriate english sentence on the fly. To use a programming analogy, it is like writing Haskell code as if it was C. Because you aren't thinking functionally, for every imperative step the C code in your head takes you have to translate it to some sort of functional analog.

You can get through it, but it is slower, and looks "funny" to a "native".


Don't forget, in a 401(k) you put up 100% of the input funds, accept 100% of the risk, and only get some percentage of the profits.

See this frontline for details: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement/world/401...


I've got a vim setup hosted on github: https://github.com/srathbun/vim-plugins

It has Klen's python-mode plugin as a submodule: https://github.com/klen/python-mode

Python-mode provides awesome sause :) To get the repo, clone it recursively, or you won't have all the submodules. `git clone --recursive https://github.com/srathbun/vim-plugins.git ~/.vim`


Umm, there's this thing called hard/soft links...


This is one thing I don't understand about people working in startups. You are in the business of you. The startup is in the business of the startup. Don't conflate the two.


That's the way I looked at it. Get through it without a lot of debt and be a big fish in a little pond.

I'm smart enough to work on "hard" problems, but the stuff I do now is interesting, and while my gross income is lower, my net income is quite a bit higher.


I assumed this viewpoint was always understood. After all, business is easy.

If you at least break even, you are a going concern. Otherwise, business failure is inevitable.


That's an impressive bit of debugging.


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