I'm trying to understand the concept of languages levels (regular, context free, context sensitive, etc.).
I can look this up easily, but all explanations I find are a load of symbols and talk about sets. I have two questions:
Can you describe in words what a regular language is, and how the languages differ?
Where do people learn to understand this stuff? As I understand it, it is formal mathematics? I had a couple of courses at uni which used it and barely anyone understood it as the tutors just assumed we knew it. Where can I learn it and why are people "expected" to know it in so many sources? It's like there's a gap in education.
Here's an example:
Any language belonging to this set is a regular language over the alphabet.
How can a language be "over" anything?