Curious about the compilation process / working mechanism

[anzhi0708]

Hello!
I am a beginner and very interested in programming and computer science.
I have always been curious about why there isn't another programming language that runs on the Python Virtual Machine; today, I accidentally discovered Erg. I understand that it can be compiled into Python bytecode and can also be translated into Python text code. Given that Python itself has modules like compileall that can directly compile Python code into bytecode, my question is: during the process of compiling Erg code into Python bytecode, is the code first translated into Python code and then compiled into bytecode? Or have you thoroughly studied Python bytecode, so that Erg code can be directly compiled into Python bytecode? (Considering that Erg has its own binary files, I lean towards the first guess.)

[anzhi0708]

I think I just found the answer here.

[mtshiba]

Erg generates Python bytecode from HIR (AST with type information etc.). The overall Erg architecture is described here.

The backend that outputs Python scripts was added later and some features have not yet been implemented.

Here's my personal thought on why there aren't many transpiled languages that output Python bytecode.
Python bytecode is not publicly specified and compatibility breaks with each minor version. It is very difficult to follow this.
Currently Erg only supports Python 3.7~3.11.

[anzhi0708]

Thanks for your reply! ^_^