"Targets a version of JavaScript that is not the most modern but exists on the bulk of my target computers" is roughly what the term is trying to convey. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's English. But it's not very similar to Janpiler.
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Replying to @wycats @ManishEarth
Sure, and "can target an ARM processor that's not really old" is a similarly useful thing to know but we don't call GCC and armpiler.
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Replying to @samth @ManishEarth
It doesn't make sense to call GCC an armpiler because it has other purposes. In any event, I think it's silly to single out "transpiler" for being a pointless distinction, and I think it happens because of "those JS kids" feelings.
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Replying to @wycats @ManishEarth
As someone who has been on the "down with the T word" for a decade now, it has never been about that, but in fact the opposite. Also, if that's true for GCC, then what's different about emcc, which is mostly just clang these days?
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I’m hesitant to weigh in but for me “transpiler” has always meant “a compiler that transforms a high-level language to high-level language”, inheriting all the fuzziness in the term “high-level language”
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is GHC a transpiler then? I mean, it compiles down to (a variant of) C
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Replying to @strega_nil @samth and
C isn’t high-level (and C-- less so), so no
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I think this definition has to include CFront if it's to be useful, at least in 1985.
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Sure, in 1985 cfront could be considered a transpiler. I’m not claiming there is some clear-cut definition of “high-level language”. “Transpiler” is a fuzzy, imprecise term, but it has a meaning just as much as the term “high-level language” has a meaning.
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I think this distinction makes a little more sense but ultimately still confuses more than it clarifies. Coffeescript, Clojurescript, and GHCjs are really different systems that are not helpfully included in one particular subset of the space of compilers.
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Well, I consider all three transpilers. But maybe my definition is wrong!
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Right, I agree that your definition puts them all together. That's what I don't like about it.
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if the JS community finds a definition useful, why not let them have it? in a narrower context it absolutely sounds useful. we don't have to generalize it, that's not how terminology works.
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End of conversation
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