Compiling vs Transpiling

Question

While searching about the difference, I came across these definitions:

Compiling is the general term for taking source code written in one language

Answer 1

I mostly agree with tapananand answer, but...

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definition

Words are "made", so they serve a purpose. And this also changes with time.

We now tend to use transpiler to specify a compiler that translates code into some other code "more similar" to the source one, that what a compiler might do. And is used to differentiate both mostly when both of them are mentioned in the same context (again mostly implying that a transpile language will have to get compiled at least once more)

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examples

So everything is very subjective. At the time of this writing:

• Coming from the Java world I could call CoffeeScript/TypeScript transpilers to depict that the resulting code is no more efficient than the original one.
• CoffeScript documentation says it's a compiler, and babel is a transpiler. The want do say that CoffeeScript, although very similar, is not Javascript. At least not a version of it, as that is what babel produces.
• Babel calls itself a compiler.

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fazit

So transpile is at this time very rarely used anymore, and only to tell two compilers apart.

It will probably dissapear as concept, since compilation is much more complicated than that (same/higher/lower language, version, etc), and the word doesn't seem to be useful anymore ("transpilers" are now ubiquitous)