There are far more languages that compile to Java bytecode then to javascript or Webassembly and it has been a thing for far longer. The Java virtual machine ha

There are far more languages that compile to Java bytecode then to javascript or Webassembly and it has been a thing for far longer. The Java virtual machine has a good jit-compiler(at least for java but often for other languages too) and a good garbage collector. It offers access to many useful libraries especially for desktop guis so its long been a target. Most popular languages targeting java include groovy, scala, clojure, Kotlin. Also Jruby is a fairly popular alternative ruby implementation on top of the JVM You're probably thinking of something like cpythons bytecode which is unstable internal only thing (breaking compatibility with minor python versions). Java bytecode has to be stable since it had to be shared by multiple jvm implementations. And even then a famous ruby hacker made a ruby-to-python-bytecode-compiler(now probably broken by version changes). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321204