Computational theory would be a better name, but it overlaps with a more specific subset of what is normally called CS.

My CS program had virtually no programming outside a couple of courses where C was used to implement concepts. Had one applications type course where mostly Java was used.

CS is and should be a specialized math curriculum IMO. Teaching specific programming languages is time that would be better spent teaching theory that can’t be taught by dev docs or code bootcamps, as exemplified by your anecdote. Unfortunately nowadays people tend to see degrees as glorified job training programs.

This is exactly it. Regex is super simple. The difficulty is maintaining a mental mapping between language/util <-> regex engine <-> engine syntax & character class names. It gets worse when utils also conditionally enable extended syntaxes with flags or options.

The hardest part is remembering whether you need to use \w or [:alnum:].

Way too few utils actually mention which syntax they use too. Most just say something accepts a “regular expression”, which is totally ambiguous.

This is exactly it. Regex is super simple. The difficulty is maintaining a mental mapping between language/util <-> regex engine <-> engine syntax & character class names. It gets worse when utils also conditionally enable extended syntaxes with flags or options.

The hardest part is remembering whether you need to use \w or [:alnum:].

Way too few utils actually mention which syntax they use too. Most just say something accepts a “regular expression”, which is totally ambiguous.

This is exactly it. Regex is super simple. The difficulty is maintaining a mental mapping between language/util <-> regex engine <-> engine syntax & character class names. It gets worse when utils also conditionally enable extended syntaxes with flags or options.

The hardest part is remembering whether you need to use \w or [:alnum:].

Way too few utils actually mention which syntax they use too. Most just say something accepts a “regular expression”, which is totally ambiguous.

This is exactly it. Regex is super simple. The difficulty is maintaining a mental mapping between language/util <-> regex engine <-> engine syntax & character class names. It gets worse when utils also conditionally enable extended syntaxes with flags or options.

The hardest part is remembering whether you need to use \w or [:alnum:].

Way too few utils actually mention which syntax they use too. Most just say something accepts a “regular expression”, which is totally ambiguous.