Hi Folks,
Today I learned a new word: transpiling
On a slight tangent, I've never liked the term "compiler". I prefer "translator". "Translator" maps well with "interpreter" when talking about natural languages. That seems like a good reason to also use it for
computer languages.
Bringing it back to this thread, I think the difference between compilers
and transpilers is largely meaningless. They're both just translators.
I'm working for years on the Delphi to C++ translator "Delphi2Cpp",
without beeing aware, that this kind of software is called a "transpiler".
https://www.texttransformer.com/Delphi2Cpp_en.html <https://www.texttransformer.com/Delphi2Cpp_en.html>
In contrast to a compiler, which has to be fast because it is used over
and over again in the development of software, the speed of the
tranpiler does not matter: ideally, it only has to be used once to do
its job.
I'm working for years on the Delphi to C++ translater "Delphi2Cpp",
without beeing aware, that this kind of software is called a "transpiler".
[ by some people ]
In contrast to a compiler, which has to be fast because it is used over
and over again in the development of software, the speed of the
transpiler does not matter: ideally, it only has to be used once to do
its job.
I'm working for years on the Delphi to C++ translater "Delphi2Cpp",
without beeing aware, that this kind of software is called a "transpiler".
On a slight tangent, I've never liked the term "compiler". I prefer "translator". "Translator" maps well with "interpreter" when talking about natural languages. That seems like a good reason to also use it for
computer languages.
Back in the day of Grace Hopper working on Fortran, the terms were
different from today. The "tran" in Fortran of course stands for translation.
"To compile" is an attractive word in that it means putting stuff
together
It isn't; that's just a word used by some web programming hipsters. Transpilers are everywhere, because browsers are stuck with Javascript
as their lowest-level target language*, and it sucks so terribly that
people want to use almost anything else. The bar is quite low; it's easy
to write toy languages that spit out Javascript, so it has become a kind
of popular sport, and from there came "transpiling".
[The Bell Labs portable C compiler output assembler source code, although most people didn't notice since it normally assembled it and threw the assembler code away. Last time I checked gcc and clang do the same. -John]
I meant the final executable result is (can be) generated from source
code by a single C compiler invocation. How this result is obtained in detail, in how many passes, by how many related tools, is not so obvious
and of less interest to the user.
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