[moron4hire]

> A different way to think about compilers vs interpreters is that compilers are programs that read source code as input and generate an executable artifact as output while interpreters are programs that read source code as input and then, as a side effect, perform the instructions within the interpreter process.

I think that's a very fair definition, and one I agree with completely. But I also admitted that I was grossly oversimplifying, which I thought was necessary given the stated background of the person I was responding to. As you pointed out, the step from interpreter to transpiler is almost trivial. My goal was to attempt to describe the much less trivial portions of the work without getting too bogged down in details.

But you make good points about transpilers that I probably should have mentioned. Lots of very good, very valuable work has been done with languages that have not gone all the way to emitting CPU-specific op codes.