6 ms·

You are, presumably, already a developer, so you already understand nesting. Perhaps a better example that a beginner could find quite reasonable after learning

• smashface 11y ago
  This is a much better example of the point the author was trying to illustrate. Though I'm not sure sure if the HTML / TeX comparison is the best to exemplify the concept. I feel that if a beginner were to make the conceptual mistake that HTML tags are not nested that they may also not grasp that {}'s are to be nested as well. Thus falling into the same trap as HTML. I'll admit that {}'s look more obvious to form a nested structure but it may also be that my eyes are trained to see them exactly as such.
• arnsholt 11y ago
  That's not allowed because parsing that kind of nesting requires a context sensitive parser, which is much more expensive computationally than context free parsers.
  • tricolon 11y ago
    I understand that, you understand that, and your parent commenter probably understands that, but the point is that a user of HTML should not have to understand it.
    • Arnavion 11y ago
      IRC formatting codes (not standard, but popularized by mIRC and thus implemented by most clients) are also toggles instead of begin-end pairs, so they allow this. If I remember correctly, old text processors like WordStar also implemented formatting as toggles.
• ygra 11y ago
  Fun thing is: HTML goes out of its way to ensure that this does work.