> I don't have to carefully prompt my compiler in case it might misinterpret what I'm saying.

Yes you do. You give it flags, you give it ENV vars.

> My compiler comes with a precisely specified language.

No, it doesn't.

> I never, ever, review the output of my compiler.

Yes, that's the whole point of the exercise. Have you ever reviewed the -S output from GCC? No? So do you really know what your code is doing?