On the contrary: it reifies people's prejudices and prevents them from seeing reality, often in the service of intentional deception, which for my purposes is the opposite of a useful purpose in communication.
There's currently a fad in my country for selling "micellar water" for personal skin cleansing, touted as an innovation. But "micelles" are just the structure that any surfactant forms in water, such as soap, dish detergent, or shampoo, once a certain critical concentration is reached, so "micellar water" is just water with detergent in it. People believe they are buying a new product because it's named with words that they don't know, but they are being intentionally deceived.
Similarly, health food stores are selling "collagen supplements" for US$300 per kilogram to prevent your skin from aging. These generally consist of collagen hydrolysate. The more common name for collagen hydrolysate is "gelatin". Food-grade gelatin sells for US$15 per kilogram. (There is some evidence that it works, but it's far from overwhelming, but what I'm focusing on here is the terminology.) People believe they are buying a special new health supplement because they don't know what gelatin is, but they are being intentionally deceived.
You might argue, "People somehow know micellar water when they see it," or, "People somehow know collagen supplements when they see them," but in fact they don't; they are merely repeating what it says on the jar because they don't know any better. They are imagining a distinction that doesn't exist in the real world, and that delusion makes them vulnerable to deception.
Precisely the same is true of "transpilers". The term is commonly used to mislead people into believing that a certain piece of software is not a compiler, so that knowledge about compilers does not apply to it.
> The term is commonly used to mislead people into believing that a certain piece of software is not a compiler, so that knowledge about compilers does not apply to it.
Why would people use a word that has the word "compiler" in it to try to trick people into thinking something is not a compiler? I'm filing this into "issues not caused by the thing that is being complained about".
Apparently nobody has ever said to you, "No, it's not a compiler, it's a transpiler," which makes you a luckier person than I am. People know less than you think.
I don't even understand why someone would say that. What's the point in asserting that something isn't a compiler? Not that I doubt that this really happens, but I don't know what saying something "isn't a compiler" is meant to prove. Is it meant to downplay the complexity of a transpiler?
Obviously I believe transpilers are compilers. A cursory Google search shows that the word transpiler is equated to "source-to-source compiler" right away. If it truly wasn't a compiler, didn't have a true frontend and really did a trivial syntax-to-syntax translation, surely it would only be a translator, right? That is my assumption.
But all that put aside for a moment, I do stand by one thing; that's still not really an issue I blame on the existence of the word transpiler. If anything, it feels like it is in spite of the word transpiler, which itself heavily hints at the truth...
There's currently a fad in my country for selling "micellar water" for personal skin cleansing, touted as an innovation. But "micelles" are just the structure that any surfactant forms in water, such as soap, dish detergent, or shampoo, once a certain critical concentration is reached, so "micellar water" is just water with detergent in it. People believe they are buying a new product because it's named with words that they don't know, but they are being intentionally deceived.
Similarly, health food stores are selling "collagen supplements" for US$300 per kilogram to prevent your skin from aging. These generally consist of collagen hydrolysate. The more common name for collagen hydrolysate is "gelatin". Food-grade gelatin sells for US$15 per kilogram. (There is some evidence that it works, but it's far from overwhelming, but what I'm focusing on here is the terminology.) People believe they are buying a special new health supplement because they don't know what gelatin is, but they are being intentionally deceived.
You might argue, "People somehow know micellar water when they see it," or, "People somehow know collagen supplements when they see them," but in fact they don't; they are merely repeating what it says on the jar because they don't know any better. They are imagining a distinction that doesn't exist in the real world, and that delusion makes them vulnerable to deception.
Precisely the same is true of "transpilers". The term is commonly used to mislead people into believing that a certain piece of software is not a compiler, so that knowledge about compilers does not apply to it.