[nice_byte]

This part is kind of addressed by having things like SPIR-V - shaders are defined with "bytecode", which itself is produced by a separate compiler. This makes things easier for language designers and driver developers. I don't see a reason why same approach couldn't be implemented in OpenGL. In fact, it would be awesome to have a GL extension for SPIR-V that just adds a corresponding "spirv" bninary format to glShaderBinary

[klodolph]

You mean the GL_SHADER_BINARY_FORMAT_SPIR_V_ARB format, which is part of the GL_ARB_gl_spirv extension?

[nice_byte]

Huh, I didn't know that extension existed! :)

[tarpherder]

A nice illustration of half the issues with OpenGL.