It's a fine book and you should not tell people to read it.
It belongs in a first compilers course where you learn about how scanners and parsers work, not just "configure this then call `yylex`". So yeah, it nerds out about finite state machines for a little too long for most audiences. And you know your audience. Your audience wants to write a compiler today, so you are correct not to recommend this book.
It belongs in a first compilers course where you learn about how scanners and parsers work, not just "configure this then call `yylex`". So yeah, it nerds out about finite state machines for a little too long for most audiences. And you know your audience. Your audience wants to write a compiler today, so you are correct not to recommend this book.