FWIW the custom language is very close to C, and the examples are pretty much a 1-1 transposition.
I agree with you though on a different note. It's dubious to compare compilers by benchmarking them, because tests are highly arbitrary and are won/lost based on single weak links. It's not really an exact science, but rather something you can start with to figure out how things are behaving. I mostly base my opinions by looking at the assembly code each compiler generates, but a single bar graph is a better presentation for articles.
I agree with you though on a different note. It's dubious to compare compilers by benchmarking them, because tests are highly arbitrary and are won/lost based on single weak links. It's not really an exact science, but rather something you can start with to figure out how things are behaving. I mostly base my opinions by looking at the assembly code each compiler generates, but a single bar graph is a better presentation for articles.