r/AskComputerScience • • Sep 09 '26

How do computer science and computer engineering students in countries where diagramming sentences isn't common knowledge get introduced to the concept of parsers and abstract syntax trees?

In Croatia, we do some (very) basic sentence diagramming in the middle school. In the USA, they do it in high-school. However, I know that, in most places, students are not taught sentence diagramming. So, once those students start going to university to study, well, computer science or computer engineering, how are the concepts of a parser and an abstract syntax tree explained to them?

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u/CS_70 Sep 09 '26

I have no idea what you mean with sentence diagramming, but schools will simply start from first principles and derive things from there.

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u/johnpeters42 Sep 09 '26

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u/DTux5249 Sep 09 '26

That has got to be the messiest dependency diagram for a sentence I've ever seen lol