Challenge 3: Why Transpilation Differs From Compiling to Machine Code — Possible Solution
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THIS CHAPTER'S OWN DEFINITION
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Per this chapter's own opening definition, transpilation converts
code "from one syntax into a different but comparable syntax —
source to source, staying at roughly the same level of abstraction."
Both the input and the output of a transpilation step are still
genuinely human-readable, structured source code — JavaScript in, a
different (but still recognizably JavaScript, or JavaScript-derived)
form out.

WHAT COMPILING TO MACHINE CODE DOES INSTEAD
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Compiling source code down to real machine code produces output at a
FUNDAMENTALLY LOWER level of abstraction — raw binary instructions a
CPU's own hardware executes directly, with no remaining resemblance
to the original source's own syntax, structure, or readability at
all. This is a genuinely different KIND of transformation than
Babel's own arrow-function-to-plain-function rewrite or tsc's own
type-stripping — it isn't producing a more-compatible version of
similar code, it's producing something operating at an entirely
different layer (actual CPU instructions rather than any form of
source code).

WHY THE DISTINCTION IS MEANINGFUL, NOT JUST TERMINOLOGY
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Because transpiled output stays at roughly the same abstraction level
as its input, a human can still read, and even directly compare, the
"before" and "after" of a transpilation — exactly what this chapter's
own Babel before/after example demonstrated. Machine code produced by
a real compiler has no equivalent direct readability at all; nobody
casually reads raw machine instructions the way a developer might
skim transpiled JavaScript output. This is also exactly why source
maps (this chapter's own later topic) are even a sensible solution
for transpiled code — mapping between two forms of source code that
are still structurally similar is a tractable problem in a way that
mapping arbitrary machine code back to original source is a
substantially harder one.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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It applies the chapter's own explicit "source to source, same level
of abstraction" definition, contrasts it against the fundamentally
different output machine-code compilation produces, and explains why
this distinction has real practical consequences (readability,
comparability, and the tractability of source-mapping) rather than
being a purely definitional technicality.