Intentional Compilation

In 1972, Neil Armstrong went out on a world tour. In Japan, a tiny grade student asked him “What is it like on the moon ?” Neil thought over on what could be the most fitting reply to his tiny audience and answered, “For sure, there are no old woman or green cheese on the moon”.

The Japanese interpreter translated this statement to something that would literally mean, “For sure, there are no rabbits on the moon.”

Was this an accurate translation ?

THIS WAS THE BEST TRANSLATION POSSIBLE !!!

Whereas the American kids were brought up with folklores of an old woman and lots of green cheese on the moon, Japanese kids were brought up with stories of the mama rabbit and her many kids on the moon.

Move Ahead Syntax-Directed Compilation

Contrast this with how most of the compilers translate from a source language to the target language. By and large, compilation is a syntax-directed process, which results in outputs which do not fit the spirit of the target language even a bit.

The most striking example in this regard is the area of Java To C translation, wherein for most of the available Java To C compilers, a simple hello-world Java program could produce upto 200K of C output.

At ReInvent, we are pioneering Intentional Compilation, which takes compilation light years ahead of syntax-directed translation.

The general flow for Intentional Compilation would comprise of 2 steps

 i) capture the Intention present in the source language.

ii) express that Intention in the target language.

I3J2C - Java To C Compiler
The FIRST “Intentional Compilation” Product

ReInvent has been instrumental in developing I3J2C - a Java To C compiler which creates C outputs which are intuitively very similar to the C programs that a programmer would write while programming in C. Due to this reason, I3J2C outputs very crisp and efficient C code.