A couple points: 1. the dangling else problem is trivial to deal with. 2. I've written a C++ parser, I know the issues involved, and I know that a parser generator isn't going to fix that.
> delivering the lesson that lexers/parsers are easy in general is, I think, the wrong message to be sending.
I stand by the message :-) in the sense that if a person finds lexing/parsing to be hard, they're likely to find the semantic/optimization/codegen parts of the compiler to be insurmountable.
I've written compilers for numerous languages, including C++, including 2 languages I invented, and lexing & parsing is just not that hard relative to the rest of a compiler.
> delivering the lesson that lexers/parsers are easy in general is, I think, the wrong message to be sending.
I stand by the message :-) in the sense that if a person finds lexing/parsing to be hard, they're likely to find the semantic/optimization/codegen parts of the compiler to be insurmountable.
I've written compilers for numerous languages, including C++, including 2 languages I invented, and lexing & parsing is just not that hard relative to the rest of a compiler.