4 ms·

> Otterkit compiles to C# Is it really a transpiler? Why not directly compile to CIL? > I'm sure that most people are not aware that COBOL has generics But t

by Rochus 4y ago

> Otterkit compiles to C# Is it really a transpiler? Why not directly compile to CIL? > I'm sure that most people are not aware that COBOL has generics But this is only in the more recent standards, isn't it? I guess that 95% of existing Cobol applications still use the 1974 standard version.

Semaphor 4y ago
> Why not directly compile to CIL? This was asked and answered on reddit [0]: > Exactly, there's no way that we could optimize the IL better than the dotnet compiler, so we chose to emit C# text and let the dotnet compiler do the optimization for us. > This also makes it a lot simpler to generate code, without having to deal with the lower level IL. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/1074jdj/otterkit_a_new_free_and_open_source_cobol_to_c/j3l5p68/ https://old.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/1074jdj/otterkit_a_...
- garganzol 4y ago
  JFYI, optimizations performed by C# compiler are not that great. They are present but their extent is pretty limited. Actually I like it better when COBOL gets transpiled to C# and not IL but for another reason. COBOL -> C# pathway allows migration to something a bit more modern than COBOL itself. This may be crucial for some projects.
KTSnowy 4y ago
> Is it really a transpiler? Why not directly compile to CIL? The end result of running Otterkit will be an executable or a C# DLL, so compiler would still be the most accurate word to describe it. If it stopped at the translation stage it would be a transpiler. We're compiling to C# source text so that we can take advantage of the dotnet compiler optimizations. Otterkit calls the dotnet compiler after translating to C#.
- Rochus 4y ago
  > advantage of the dotnet compiler optimizations That's mostly constant folding and a bit of peephole optimization; the CLI JIT or AOT compilers do most optimizations on the CIL level. > so compiler would still be the most accurate word to describe it Well, you do a source-to-source translation from Cobol to C#. The terminology is fuzzy, but usually we call it a transpiler if the output is yet another high-level programming language. But who cares.

by Rochus 4y ago

Semaphor 4y ago

> Why not directly compile to CIL? This was asked and answered on reddit [0]: > Exactly, there's no way that we could optimize the IL better than the dotnet compiler, so we chose to emit C# text and let the dotnet compiler do the optimization for us. > This also makes it a lot simpler to generate code, without having to deal with the lower level IL. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/1074jdj/otterkit_a_new_free_and_open_source_cobol_to_c/j3l5p68/ https://old.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/1074jdj/otterkit_a_...

garganzol 4y ago
JFYI, optimizations performed by C# compiler are not that great. They are present but their extent is pretty limited. Actually I like it better when COBOL gets transpiled to C# and not IL but for another reason. COBOL -> C# pathway allows migration to something a bit more modern than COBOL itself. This may be crucial for some projects.

KTSnowy 4y ago

> Is it really a transpiler? Why not directly compile to CIL? The end result of running Otterkit will be an executable or a C# DLL, so compiler would still be the most accurate word to describe it. If it stopped at the translation stage it would be a transpiler. We're compiling to C# source text so that we can take advantage of the dotnet compiler optimizations. Otterkit calls the dotnet compiler after translating to C#.

Rochus 4y ago
> advantage of the dotnet compiler optimizations That's mostly constant folding and a bit of peephole optimization; the CLI JIT or AOT compilers do most optimizations on the CIL level. > so compiler would still be the most accurate word to describe it Well, you do a source-to-source translation from Cobol to C#. The terminology is fuzzy, but usually we call it a transpiler if the output is yet another high-level programming language. But who cares.