Yep, that is exactly my analysis of the situation: an actual compiler vendor would never (could never) pull any of these stunts, or they'd simply go out of business in a jiffy. Alas, we all got suckered into "free", and now the compiler writers no longer listen to their users, because they are not their customers.
Their customers are they PhD advisers and Google, Apple and maybe a few more "whales" as Stonebraker described them, lamenting a similar situation in databases. Their needs are almost completely different from the rest of us!
For Google, a 0.1% performance improvement in one of their key applications is worth quite a bit of extra pain for their own developers, and pretty much an infinite amount of pain for other developers.
Their customers are they PhD advisers and Google, Apple and maybe a few more "whales" as Stonebraker described them, lamenting a similar situation in databases. Their needs are almost completely different from the rest of us!
For Google, a 0.1% performance improvement in one of their key applications is worth quite a bit of extra pain for their own developers, and pretty much an infinite amount of pain for other developers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJFKl_5JTnA