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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

2 hours later, I think it's safe to say there are multiple definitions in play that are, if not outright contradictory, certainly not identical.

It seems the term is not terribly useful even on its own terms... it is not as well defined as everyone thinks.

Ultimately, "compiler" isn't a bright shining line either... I can take anything and shade it down to the point where you might not be sure ("is that a 'compiler' or an 'interpreter'?"), but the "transpiler" term is trying to draw a line where there isn't even a seam in the landscape.

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> the "transpiler" term is trying to draw a line where there isn't even a seam in the landscape.

I don't think you have proven that it is a seamless landscape. In fact, I think that people's definitions have been remarkably consistent in spite of their fuzziness. The heart of what I have read is that most people understand a transpiler to be an intermediate text to text translation whose output is input to another tool. The common colloquial definition of a compiler is a text to machine code (for some definition of machine code) translation whose output is an executable program on a host platform. You can make an argument that every compiler is a transpiler or every transpiler is a compiler, but I think it requires a level of willful obtuseness or excessive pedantry to deny that there is something behind the concept of a transpiler. This discussion wouldn't even be happening if transpiler were a completely meaningless term.

> , but I think it requires a level of willful obtuseness or excessive pedantry to deny that there is something behind the concept of a transpiler.

Transpiler means something. Fuzzily. And it defines and denotes nothing of practical utility.

> This discussion wouldn't even be happening if transpiler were a completely meaningless term

This discussion wouldn’t even be happening if (people like) JS programmers didn’t insist on using terminology that implied some archaic view of technology, like “compilers emit machine code”—the distinction between high- or low-level target languages aren’t interesting anymore, even if it might have been novel to normie programmers in the 90’s or something.

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