I am teaching (with others) a relatively introductory course in computer science for IT professionals without a background in CS. Since I developed the course materials on automata and grammars, I am also responsible for teaching about compilers and compiler construction.
Years ago, when I studied compilation in college, all our examples came from Lex and Yacc. Are these still in widespread use? Is there something that is more commonly used for Java? The students are proficient in C and Java but have never used parser generators.
Any tips on what to teach would be appreciated
Antlr is widely used, well documented, and free. It is supported by Ant, and can target Java among many other languages.