I'm so glad this was mentioned every time I see performance related metrics I really wish there was more documentation on how quakec/quake vm worked. Mind you https://fabiensanglard.net/quake3/qvm.php is very good on the technical breakdown which is far more valuable.

I don't think so. QuakeC was its own language.

This is more like Quake 3 which used a general purpose VM that you could compile regular C to.