Graybeards know compiler technology is much more complex than simple go/no-go code parsing. In the 70-odd years since Grace Hopper brought compilers into existence, every milestone in processor design has been blessed or cursed by compiler advances or the lack of them. Itanium died because Intel couldn't make the compiler fly. Arm prospered because its compilers made its performance available.

Only compilers can unify the market: C wouldn't be more than a footnote if its compiler technology wasn't easy to port to multiple platforms. Conversely, compilers can divide the market. Think of the 1980s with multiple monolithic C compilers trying to lock products into platforms by making porting painful. They weren't very good, they weren't very compatible, life was slower and harder than it needed to be.

It is hard to overstate the difference that GCC made to that environment. Compilers can be split into three components: a front end, an optimizer, and a back end. The front end takes your code and digests it into a form the optimizer can then arrange according to rules, and the back end translates that output into the right object format for the target system. GCC liberated this structure, so if you wanted to write a new language, you just had to worry about the front end. A new target instruction set, just the back end. A particular cache structure, hit the optimizer. The benefits are shared with everyone.

That's where the true magic of compilerdom lies. You can have the world's most thoughtfully designed language, but if your compiler makes slow code, nobody will care. With GCC, you got the same kit of parts as everyone else and you could concentrate on what makes your language or processor special. When GCC stopped being the GNU C Compiler and became the GNU Compiler Collection, the economics and scope of compilers skyrocketed, and systems innovation followed them into orbit.

Then LLVM went a step further, and broke compiler technology into a set of libraries, meaning that some of the things compilers do very well, as in optimally managing data structures and parsing complex commands, can be added into databases and browsers and all manner of applications. Sure, languages are cool, but a complete architectural component model is cooler. Do you want magic in a bottle or to badly reinvent the wheel?