Perhaps an enterprising secondary school math teacher could lead the charge by introducing regular expressions in Algebra class.
Regular expressions are algebraic, useful for logical theory and, eventually, handy for programming manipulations with real language. I posit that introducing students to regular expressions at the same time that they’re learning the axioms of algebra would be a great “real world” bit of learning synergy.**
I for one would have appreciated first thinking about regular expressions when terms like “commutative” and “associative” were fresh in my head…
**Well, as real as the never-ending techno-evolutionary world of computing ever gets.
