In the .NET universe, you can mechanically convert between C# and VisualBasic. This is more or less done by going through CIL ( Common Intermediate Language - .

In the .NET universe, you can mechanically convert between C# and VisualBasic. This is more or less done by going through CIL ( Common Intermediate Language - .NET assembly essentially ). So, it is more or less what you are saying. .NET decompilers are common. I have built a few toy languages and compilers on .NET. For one of them, I could decompile CIL into my language. So, I could view .NET libraries from other sources in my language. I think this is essentially the same idea you are proposing. It only works if the languages are similar though. Going between F# and C# does not always work as well for example.