The compiler market is interesting, when I look back thirty years to when I started programming there were dozens of small companies providing various languages and tools. There are a few now but not on the same scale.
This probably is a good thing, it is possible to get started now with no expenditure beyond the hardware whereas when I started I was limited by what I could afford.
This is also handy for hardware companies. It seems like almost every embedded processor comes standard with a GCC-based toolchain, so they're forced to compete on things more interesting than having good compiler support.
This probably is a good thing, it is possible to get started now with no expenditure beyond the hardware whereas when I started I was limited by what I could afford.