How a Week of Jargon and 25 Languages Resulted in Creating the Parser I Needed
Clarity Engineering
TL;DR: If You're Here Because Tree-sitter's node-types.json Makes No Sense
You're not alone. Tree-sitter's terminology is confusing because it evolved from internal implementation details, not developer clarity.
The Core Problems
- "Named" doesn't mean "has a name" (everything has a name). It means "corresponds to a named grammar rule" an internal detail that's noise for most use cases.
- "Fields" and "children" are both parent-child relationships but the distinction is unclear. Fields are semantic ("this node's condition"), children are positional ("this node's first child").
- Everything is a "type" : Nodes, edges, and abstract categories all use the same terminology, obscuring the differences that matter.
This post uses formatting unsupported by dev.to, please view the rest at our website
Top comments (0)