I'm not saying it is -- but rather, that they could get away with such sloppy code generation because CPUs are so fast now. I did mention that early in the history of the PC, pretty much all compilers were like that due to other constraints, and the difference between that and handwritten Asm was enormous.
Agreed - if one takes the performance on an absolute scale, it is usually sufficient (also the reason why people use Python or PHP, despite both being, relatively, quite slow).
It is only once people start comparing it to the next best thing and/or when they desire better performance that they realise, that there is a lot of not so low hanging fruit.
I'm not saying it is -- but rather, that they could get away with such sloppy code generation because CPUs are so fast now. I did mention that early in the history of the PC, pretty much all compilers were like that due to other constraints, and the difference between that and handwritten Asm was enormous.