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Comment by mwcampbell | Hacker News Reader

This word, "transpiler", must die. Call it a translator or a compiler; there's no need for a new word in this case.

Looks like an interesting project, though. I'll keep an eye on it.

(transpiler) I think it's pretty useful. It signifies that the translation is "fairly" simple, as in the case of CoffeeScript, as opposed to traditional compilers targeting assembly or byte code, or even something like Emscripten. It implies that the translation is hand tuned to the target language to be minimal. (I believe Jeremy pretty much coined the term). See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler

Except that anyone with background in compiler design knows that compilation to another language is just yet another way to implement the language.

It is a common design pattern to make the compiler output code in one of the OS SDK languages as a means to speed up development and ease prototyping.

That's quite the point, for a transpiler targeting another language is not just "a way to implement it". It is a conscious decision with many pros and cons and an impact on the transpiled language itself.

Except no one ever spoke of transpilers when C compilers generated Assembly, C++, Objective-C and Eiffel generated C and so forth.

It was just the output of the compiler.

I am already waiting to see someone say that C transpiles to Assembly.

A transpiler is specifically a "source-to-source" language translator.

So a C compiler is a transpiler, given that classical C compilers just outputted Assembly that was processed further by the Assembler.

Eiffel compilers are also transpilers as they use C as intermediate language.

Scheme compilers are also transpilers as many use C as intermediate language.

....

So, a compiler.

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