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Thanks for this, I'd never read it before and it was very interesting. But by the end I had more questions than answers. In this situation, my first thought would never be 'i need to write my own compiler', vs say, trying any combo of the handful of c compilers on other boxes. Also it's not clear to me about the ending. Was this a real story? I couldn't tell if the 'letter' was meant to be a dystopian what-if, real, or anything in between.

The entire page is fiction, presumably. Hopefully.

That being said, it's not professional fiction. It's possibly the first work of the writer, and works because of talent (probably) and a good premise (definitely), but it's sorely lacking in polish and editing. I wouldn't look too closely at the cracks. :)

I'm going to have nightmares for a decade after reading that...

Not related, but Coding Machines reminded me of the relatively unknown movie Pontypool, which has a similar premise (I won't spoil it).

I looked it up on Wikipedia, sorry. :)

It does look like an interesting movie. I think I'll take a look.