Transpiler Is a Meaningless Word

Comments (1)

panstromek · 4h ago

Yes, also a reason why I think the word is slowly disappearing. We used to call JS bundling tools transpilers, but I noticed more and more people call them just compilers. They do everything that compiler do, they only differ in output being a programming language.

I think what distinguishes the word is not necessarily what it does, but what the use case is. I usually say transpiler when I'm talking about source-to-source tools (like c2rust), where the product is more inteded to be consumed or modified by a human. I use compiler when I talk about source-to-artifact tools.

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Transpiler Is a Meaningless Word

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