>It is quite telling from existing community culture, that some folks only read their compiler manuals when government knocks on the door.

What do you want to say?

Is this bad? I think this is desired. Only in c or c++ world people act like understanding how compiler internals work (often poorly) is desired

Where in the world reading a compiler manual means understanding compiler internals?!?

One does not need to understand compiler internals to be aware what build flags are used to turn bounds checking on the standard library.

> Only in c or c++ world people act like understanding how compiler internals work (often poorly) is desired

I think this says more about other parts of the developer ecosystem than about C and C++. Understanding how the compilers work (and how CPUs work) is fundamental to software development.

>Understanding how the compilers work (and how CPUs work) is fundamental to software development.

Well, you can get very, very far without understanding compiler passes and how CPUs work

I have never known a situation where LESS knowledge about the compiler (flags, options, hell even internal workings) have been better - on the contrary.