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Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)

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Re: Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)

#111

Post by cestith »

ablob wrote: post #95
cestith wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your definitions, but all three of these could be called subsets of compilers.

By the definitions given they can not, as no function subsumes another. By whatever you define as "compiler" maybe, but I see no point in this kind of interaction that essentially boils down to subsumtion to an entity you refuse to describe any further. Is there a merit to this? Can whatever you call compiler do more? Is it all three of the things mentioned combined? Who knows - as is stands I only know that you disa…

I think they are fine definitions. I think a transpiler, a term rewriter, an assembler, a stand-alone optimizer, and even some pretty printers are subclasses of compilers.

I define a compiler as something that takes an input in a language, does transformations, and produces a transformed output in a language. All of them do that, and they are more specific terms for types of compilers.

Re: Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)

#112

Post by cestith »

jrm4 wrote: post #96
cestith wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your definitions, but all three of these could be called subsets of compilers.

Except that they do what useful words do; provide (more) useful information.

Fair. I don’t believe I said they were useless terms for differentiation of types of compilers, though. I just said they can all be thought of as a class as different types of compilers.

Re: Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)

#114

Post by coldtea »

I find it a useful world to point to the distinction of converting code between two equally high level programming languages, vs between a higher level language to a low level representation (assembly, C, java bytecode, llvm ir, etc) target.

"Compiler already covers that"? Yeah, and animal already covers cat, shall we drop the term cat too?

Re: Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)

#115

Post by coldtea »

cestith wrote: post #86
Izkata wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Compiler" encompassing "transpiler" I think is wrong anyway. There's a third term that doesn't seem to get nearly as much pushback, that didn't come up in your link, has yet to be mentioned here, and isn't in the article, but adds context for these two: decompiler. Compiling is high-level to low-level (source code to runnable, you rarely look at the output). Decompiling is low-level to high-level (runnable to source…

I like your definitions, but all three of these could be called subsets of compilers.

So what? A car, a bike, and a truck can all be called subsets of vehicles, but we still have (and need) different words for each type.

Re: Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)

#116

Post by vrighter »

jchw wrote: post #17

Transpilers are compilers that translate from one programming language to the other. I am not 100% sure where these "lies" come from, but it's literally in the name, it's clearly a portmanteau of translating compiler... Where exactly are people thinking the "-piler" suffix comes from? Yes, I know. You could argue that a C compiler is a transpiler, because assembly language is generally considered a programming langua…

so is the thing that generates bytecode from java or c# source code a compiler or a transpiler? Because the generated code will be compiled by the JIT at runtime.

Re: Transpiler, a Meaningless Word (2023)

#117

Post by cestith »

coldtea wrote: post #115
cestith wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your definitions, but all three of these could be called subsets of compilers.

So what? A car, a bike, and a truck can all be called subsets of vehicles, but we still have (and need) different words for each type.

Primates, canids, felids, and ungulates are all subsets of mammals and all have further subsets. Mammalia is further a subset of animalia. When we’re discussing categorizations, it’s often helpful to have multiple levels of categories. I’m not sure why you seem to be calling out specificity as a gotcha, when my argument isn’t at all that we don’t need multiple terms. It’s that we should consider these things in terms of similarity and specific differences, not throw away a term as useless as the article and its headline suggest.
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