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Comment by sandov | Hacker News Reader

Then how do they usually bootstrap C? Do they write a C compiler without structs, then program a C with structs compiler using C without structs?

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They cross-compile on a machine that already has a C compiler.

But how was the first compiler bootstrapped? Serious question (how can a compiler of X language be written in X?)

They wrote in another language. I think the bootstrap C compiler was written in BCPL.

Thsts awesome. Id love to see a lineage tree of early language development.

More info can be found here (straight from the source...)

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/chist.html

https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/primevalC.html

And, for example, C++ was originally a C program that transpiled C++ -> C.

No, it wasn’t. “Transpile” is not a real word. There is no need to desecrate the first ever C++ compiler.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-to-source_compiler

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cfront

“Source-to-source” is redundant. You can just shorten this to “compiler”.

It's not redundant. A "source-to-source" compiler isn't a "source-to-machine code" compiler

It is redundant. See page 1 of most compiler books.

Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

Simply stated, a compiler is a program that can read a program in one language - the source language - and translate it into an equivalent program in another language - the target language

Engineering a Compiler

Compilers are computer programs that translate a program written in one language into a program written in another language

The word ‘transpiler’ has been used in academic literature since at least the late 60s.

It has been (mis)used in a very tiny amount of academic literature. It obviously did not catch on for what one might only hope were good reasons. There is no good reason to promote this now.

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