> Also, woldn't the act of compiling to c as an intermediate step increase the > compilation time?
Yes > And wouldn't the compilation time be limited by the c compiler speed? Yes However, you're either ignoring the tradeoffs or discounting them greatly. Compiling directly to machine code means that you have to support every CPU, every surrounding machine architecture, every operating system ABI, every operating system API, and probably others I've forgotten. Someone has to write the code for that, and it isn't a one-time job; it has to be updated for every new CPU, for every new architecture, and every time Linus Torvalds gets it in his head that the Linux ABI has to change.
