Comment by tom_mellior

The problem with the old old Dragon Book's treatment of parsing is that it explains a particular impractical algorithm (LR(1)? LR(k) maybe? it's been a while) in way too much detail. You would need that detail if you were to implement a parser generator (for that specific algorithm), or a parser using that specific algorithm, which isn't terribly well suited for generating useful error messages for your users.

Today's computers are ridiculously powerful, and the perceived performance advantages of LR parsing are simply irrelevant. Further, even if you were to implement an LR parser, you would do it with the aid of a parser generator, which hides the boring details and saves you from needing to understand the LR algorithm itself. But more likely when you write a parser you use a parser generator using a different approach, or you write a recursive descent parser by hand. In either case, the dry parts of the old old Dragon Book are completely irrelevant.

The people criticizing the 1986 Dragon Book's treatment of parsing aren't saying that parsing is irrelevant. They are saying that parsing that specific way is either irrelevant or done for you by a tool that is not the interesting part of a compiler.