(I don't work on Moonbit, but I am a compiler engineer.)
> It's not really a compiler, but a transpiler to WAT.
That's still a compiler. What do you think many languages' early compilers were doing when they compiled to C source code? Heck, what do you think early C compilers were doing when they were compiling to .s files, before feeding them into assemblers?
These are all the same technology. We write compilers, with all the same skills, methodologies, practices. It doesn't matter the format that we output.
> It's not really a compiler, but a transpiler to WAT.
That's still a compiler. What do you think many languages' early compilers were doing when they compiled to C source code? Heck, what do you think early C compilers were doing when they were compiling to .s files, before feeding them into assemblers?
These are all the same technology. We write compilers, with all the same skills, methodologies, practices. It doesn't matter the format that we output.