Even the machine code isn't universal but rather tied to the hardware it's running on. The short answer is that any "intermediate" form is just another abstrac

Even the machine code isn't universal but rather tied to the hardware it's running on. The short answer is that any "intermediate" form is just another abstraction over machine language. It's turtles all the way down, as the old joke goes. The world of software is one of varying layers of abstractions, each with a specific, constrained purpose and benefits. There isn't one abstraction to rule them all. Having said that, there are several universal ways to represent the syntax of any individual language. My favorite is EBNF[0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Backus%E2%80%93Naur...