[madhuprasanna]

Nice. Some observations: Many languages compile to JavaScript(has highest number of source languages).

Java(I think JVM) and C++(native binaries??) has higher source languages.

Clojure has highest target languages(good to learn then).

Java to Java => Beanshell is interesting.

[tkirchner]

This indicates that JavaScript is a pain in the ass, which it is.

This is neither an argument against JavaScript nor was it indended as one, just a personal observation from a long-time JavaScript programmer.

[nilliams]

> This indicates that JavaScript is a pain in the ass

Or as another commenter pointed out that people want to write for the browser and want to use their favourite language to do so.

[tkirchner]

Maybe when analysing the stats it helps to distinguish between the intention of the one implementing the transcompiler (e.g. fun, proof-of-concept, research, money, actual need in a project, ...) and the size of the user-base of the transcompiler (in relation to the user-base of the language that is transcompiled to).

Lets say JS's user-base is pretty huge in relation to other languages (which is not an argument for JS). The stats show that a lot of languages transcompile to javascript, so I would indicate a real need for such projects, otherwise there would probably just exist a few as fun/proof-of-concept-projects.

Similar situation for C/C++ (maybe due to lack of high-level features) and Java (due to lack of practical features).

On the other hand: languages that only have a few or no transcompilers that compile to them, does not mean, they are better useable. There could be other things that make writing transcompilers very hard.

[tkirchner]

Maybe the fact that there are many compilers that target language A means that either language A is easy to target (so transforming to it is a fun hack) or no-one wants to program directly in language A or both (or more). I believe an example of A is JavaScript.