On the other hand, my projects in this vein are C++ projects but they implement functional languages or Scheme. I have implemented one parser that creates a syntax tree from a simple equational language, and several interpretive backends, such as SKI-combinator-based graph reduction and a TIM-based interpreter. I do care about the speed of the compilers I use for production code, but not for this work. The Scheme compiler I wrote was written to run on my own Scheme interpreter which was written in C++.

The reason I think most hobby compilers I know of don't go the way I've gone is that it takes tons and tons of research to find out how functional languages are implemented, and the Appel books are a bit daunting, too.

What exactly is "algebraic rectification"?

While it is generally true that having a formal semantics aids greatly in analysis, it is worth noting that a very large amount of program analysis work is targetted towards C. (And mind you, flexible, high level languages bring with it their own troubles. Analysis in the presence of higher order functions is not a panacea at all)