User:Shlomif/Bottom-up vs. Top-down

Learning
In top-down learning, one may start by, e.g., reading a comprehensive book about the topic, and then tries to understand everything. In bottom-up learning, one starts by learning how to do something very basic with the topic, and then gradually learns more and more.

Parsing (Computing)
Parsers are split into "bottom-up parsers" that take a stream of tokens and attempt to form a syntax tree out of them (for example LALR parsers or GLR parsers) and "top-down parsers" that say "Now I want these nodes" and try to find them (like Recursive descent parsers).