> So, if hello world is not trivial Note that the nontrivial C program I showed above was not "hello world". Emitting output is yet more complicated still. >

> So, if hello world is not trivial Note that the nontrivial C program I showed above was not "hello world". Emitting output is yet more complicated still. > you can easily generate e.g web assembly from your own lang input without linker IIRC some things that generate wasm generate object files (e.g. C translation units). Those wasm objects require a linker to resolve symbol references to create the executable. > it will run fine ...on a wasm virtual machine. IIRC Java doesn't have anything like a traditional linker either. > Aint the same viable for x86? I mean, you can do anything you want inventing a new compiler that does much more than traditional compilers. But consider perhaps that there's a lot of value in the status quo that you might appreciate more if you were more familiar with the design of a toolchain. It's not that linkers are an absolute drop-dead necessity, it's that having one allows you to have distinct assembler and compiler functions that are much simpler to design by focusing on one kind of transformation.