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Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

I can find nothing on that page that says it will compile to JS. I see a sister project that appears to interpret Processing code in a browser, but nothing about compiling to it.

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If you look at the modes section on the change list they mention that processing.js will be a mode in the standard Processing IDE along with standard and android. Up until now Processing.js has always been separate from the official Processing release.

So there will be an "official" JS VM but there will be no actual compilation. Title should be updated IMHO.

My understanding is that Processing always "compiles" (or more accurately, transliterates) to some other language -- originally Java and now JavaScript as well.

A source-to-source compiler is still a compiler, and it still compiles. Transliteration implies that there is a one-to-one mapping between concepts in the source language and the target language, which is rarely the case. (If so, why bother with another language? Some of the languages which are a more readable CSS may come close, but my understanding is that they still have a few abstractions that don't exist in CSS.)

The main case of transliteration I can think about is assembly language.

Yes, good call, there is a one-to-one mapping between assembly language and machine code.

So there will be an "official" JS VM but there will be no actual compilation.

You enter code using the Processing language, and if you've selected the JavaScript "mode" it will output JavaScript that uses processing.js and canvas.

Prior to 2.0 the modes were "standard" (i.e. Java byte code) and "android" (Dalvik byte code, I presume, since you get an apk file).

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