4+ years of programming.

Still have no clue how to make my own regex pattern.

Every single time I need to, I always open 4 cheat sheets and/or stackoverflow.

THIS.

I don't see what's wrong with that

I can do lots with regex, but I'll be damned if I know what version. Sed, perl, grep, they all seem to use a different standardization for things like back-references. Sometimes they don't even like the + operator for god knows what reason. I just throw syntax at them until something sticks.

Http://regexr.com helps

regex101.com is quite good too

I think that being a programmer is more a matter of knowing how to read the docs rather than knowing stuff by heart.

@Gcir I think you're right, but I'll have to check the manual. (:

I once took an Oracle Development course and the instructor is a senior oracle dev and he has loads of files with Regex, I asked him why all this, is it hard to memorize them, he showed me one file and its content is +100000, those regex are not easy to do ma man :)

Regex ain't that complicated you just need practice, I remember the first time I saw it was while making a website on Django and since I didn't know there where libraries out there with tons of regex examples I ended up writing each pattern and testing it on paper.

Practice, practice!

try 20 years and I still look it up when i have write regex..never learn useless things only learn useful concepts..as long as you know what it means you are good..someones gotto keep SO web traffic going

Think about what you want to do and how you'd implement a FSM to recognice it. The writing then is just a "formality". However with regex you'll never finish learning.
Post a question with what you try to achive and what you tried so far on SO and then, as @arcadesdude suggested head over to regex101.com and let the page explain you the various regex people suggested you.

Bonus, use regex101.com on your own regex, to verify it.

I once managed to solve one easy task with regex without Internet! Never felt more proud!

Just leaving this here. 😁
https://regexcrossword.com

As long as you don't use regex for fucking everything.

@bondman knowing the basics is important regardless of what you do, but I think knowing the basics of regular expressions is essential for CS and Informatics engineers since it's part of computer theory and automatons.
@Wack regex101 is an awesome tool, use it every time I need Regex.

@JKyll hmm i dont deal with informatics but I spend 2 days of every other sprint on regex related validations, so deal with it regularly and never had trouble picking up only when i wanted to..i understand your take on it though

@arcadesdude love this site. I use it every time I do regex

It took me a long time to understand the syntax of regex. Like others have said, regex101.com is an excellent resource 👍🏻

Read the JavaScript Ninja it was the only thing that successfully taught me regex to a point that since reading that book I never had to open a reference page again

Regex is meant to be forgotten

I like that regex101 is popular. It's such a neat thing.
@baskaros try using regex for all things even simple find and replace if you want motivation. It helps if you're working with legacy code and you need to edit a lot.

@dr-ant I'll try that, thanks for the tip! ;)

Regex is what you call "write-only".