Explore the concept of transpilers and their relationship to compilers in this Devoxx conference talk. Dive into the world of GraalVM and native-first frameworks like Quarkus, learning how to optimize application performance by distinguishing between static and dynamic code processing. Discover the compiler-like aspects of your own programs and gain insights into the future developments of the Drools rule engine and jBPM platform. Examine various examples, including a quick dependency injection framework, configuration files, and ORM libraries, to understand compilation phases and proper code generation techniques. Learn how to recognize compiler passes in your code, write build plug-ins, and implement annotation processors for dependency injection. Gain valuable takeaways on improving startup times and leveraging the Submarine Initiative for better performance.