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Re: Paper: CrossTL: A Universal Programming Language Translator with Unified Intermediate Representation

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From Derek <derek@shape-of-code.com>
Newsgroups comp.compilers
Subject Re: Paper: CrossTL: A Universal Programming Language Translator with Unified Intermediate Representation
Date Tue, 02 Sep 2025 12:45:49 +0100
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John,

> Invent a universal intermediate language so you just have to write a front
> end or back end per input or output language.  It works somewhat when the
> inputs and outputs are semantically close enough, viz the LLVM
> intermediate language, but has always hit the wall when the languages are
> too different.

The purpose of a universal intermediate language is to reduce
the cost of 1-to-1 translation from an n^2 problem to a linear
problem in n.

An alternative approach is to brute force it by training an
LLM on lots of code.

"In the WMT25 competition, the model achieved first place in 30 out of the 31
language categories it participated in."

https://github.com/Tencent-Hunyuan/Hunyuan-MT
[That model translates natural languages, like Ukranian to Mongolian.
I don't see how that's relevant to translating computer languages.  In
the former case, pretty close is useful, in the latter, pretty close
is a program that doesn't work. -John]

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Paper: CrossTL: A Universal Programming Language Translator with Unified Intermediate Representation John R Levine <johnl@taugh.com> - 2025-09-01 11:16 +0200
  Re: Paper: CrossTL: A Universal Programming Language Translator with Unified Intermediate Representation Derek <derek@shape-of-code.com> - 2025-09-02 12:45 +0100

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