Dinner with Al Aho was one of the highlights of when I visited Columbia a while ago. He's simply an awesome person. And he's done some fantastic work - Aho-Corasick is a great algorithm. Alas, the Dragon Book was one of the low points of my undergraduate education, though I had a great teacher who pulled out a terrifically fun class despite the book. (Thanks, +Wilson Hsieh.)
In fairness, though -- or more an admission of how wrong we can be about things like this -- I subscribed to the "parsing is boring and solved" belief until Bryan Ford's Packrat Parsing work made me realize that it had just gotten stuck at a traffic light for a few decades.
In fairness, though -- or more an admission of how wrong we can be about things like this -- I subscribed to the "parsing is boring and solved" belief until Bryan Ford's Packrat Parsing work made me realize that it had just gotten stuck at a traffic light for a few decades.