Still tempted to use the flag link though. So maybe that's actually a compliment to the author in a weird way.
From my own experience, working on "silly" projects like this, with severe artificial constraints for example, can be quite interesting and challenging and lead to lessons learned that can be applied to real projects later.
So for the author, it might have been quite constructive indeed.
You can showcase the same programming techniques in a toy compiler as you would in a production-level system.
But you may not get there because you're drowning in practical matters instead of getting to the point of innovating.
And hacker news is where I come to read about random projects like this.