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For the reverse, I wrote a WASM-to-JVM compiler: https://github.com/cretz/asmble . I think WASM has the ability for us to finally cross the language boundaries without marrying ourselves to C/C++ ABI. But at this early stage, there's no common stdlib for all languages to share.
That is how many maninframes work, and the original idea behind the CLR.
Oh, this is nice. I finally have a reason to give Kotlin a go. I have some time off and want to write something basic. Pretty excited about this, Rust, and all things wasm popping up.
I am, in no way, excited about debugging it, though.
Compile
Agreed especially given that "transpile" lacks a well-defined meaning. Just ask folks how this term differentiates from Compile and you'll get wildly varying answers and definitions.
Using the term for anything where the source is JVM bytecode is plain wrong, and it's also dubious for anything targeting WebAssembly (though if the target is specifically .wat/.wast, it may perhaps be arguably defensible.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that we've lost this battle, and some people seem to think there's a useful distinction being made, but man, does the word 'transpile' grate on me.
At the point where we are calling things that compile to assembly "transpilers" I don't think there is any distinction left, much less a useful one. I mean the classic notion of a compiler is a program that turns things into assembly, which is then taken into machine code by an assembler. I agree with you that we've lost though: no amount of protest is going to make people stop using the word "transpiler".
It is generally assumed that a compiler goes from high level to low level, a decompiler low-to-high and a transpiler high-to-high. I guess in this case the transpiler is low-to-low, so maybe "transpiler" is just used to mean "samey-to-samey"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that we've lost this battle, and some people seem to think there's a useful distinction being made, but man, does the word 'transpile' grate on me.
> some people seem to think there's a useful distinction being made What is that distinction? Excluding the javascript crowd, I doubt this phrase will see extensive use in the field until the term gets properly defined and is meaningfully distinct from the word Compile as used today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed especially given that "transpile" lacks a well-defined meaning. Just ask folks how this term differentiates from Compile and you'll get wildly varying answers and definitions.
“Transpile” is a proper subset of “compile”, where both the source and target of compilation are languages designed primarily for direct human editing (source code); it is source-to-source compilation. Using the term for anything where the source is JVM bytecode is plain wrong, and it's also dubious for anything targeting WebAssembly (though if the target is specifically .wat/.wast, it may perhaps be arguably defensi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> some people seem to think there's a useful distinction being made What is that distinction? Excluding the javascript crowd, I doubt this phrase will see extensive use in the field until the term gets properly defined and is meaningfully distinct from the word Compile as used today.
I assume "javascript crowd" knows how to compile their node binary. Thus, they know the distinction between babeljs and gcc, and therefore they know the distinction between compiler and transpiler.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that we've lost this battle, and some people seem to think there's a useful distinction being made, but man, does the word 'transpile' grate on me.
At the point where we are calling things that compile to assembly "transpilers" I don't think there is any distinction left, much less a useful one. I mean the classic notion of a compiler is a program that turns things into assembly, which is then taken into machine code by an assembler. I agree with you that we've lost though: no amount of protest is going to make people stop using the word "transpiler".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that we've lost this battle, and some people seem to think there's a useful distinction being made, but man, does the word 'transpile' grate on me.
At the point where we are calling things that compile to assembly "transpilers" I don't think there is any distinction left, much less a useful one. I mean the classic notion of a compiler is a program that turns things into assembly, which is then taken into machine code by an assembler. I agree with you that we've lost though: no amount of protest is going to make people stop using the word "transpiler".
> At the point where we are calling things that compile to assembly "transpilers" I don't think there is any distinction left
"Transpiler" is grating (apparently).