> If you are doing compiler research/development, you have to be familiar with the latest and greatest research because the margins for improving things are fairly slim. It’s usually fine to be not familiar with how things worked ~30 years ago.
On the other hand, if the margins for improving compiler quality are slim they can be ignored without great consequences: it makes sense to study state of the art research only in the niches that turn out to be relevant for a specific need of a specific project, not blindly and at the expense of important general principles and techniques (i.e. mostly the problems of 75 years ago and the solutions of 25 years ago).
On the other hand, if the margins for improving compiler quality are slim they can be ignored without great consequences: it makes sense to study state of the art research only in the niches that turn out to be relevant for a specific need of a specific project, not blindly and at the expense of important general principles and techniques (i.e. mostly the problems of 75 years ago and the solutions of 25 years ago).