Hacker News Reader

Should be called transpiler instead?

That is a fashion word from the JS community.

A compiler is a compiler, regardless of the target language.

Are you aware originally C compilers did not generate machine code directly, rather Assembly source and then called the Assembler on it.

C++ and Objective-C initially generated C.

Eiffel to this day generates either C and bytecode.

Nim and Haxe are another examples, and so forth.

fashion word or not, it's meaning is clear

The only thing that is clear is that not enough people learn compilers properly.