New Style

You have misunderstanding. Such intermediate steps are needed very rarely. Yes, the core for initial version of hardcoded. But once that is done or hardcoded. But once that is done, the language itself can be used to extend with other language constructs. At this stage, in modern compilers, that intermediate language is long gone. Or rather hanging out only in version control system.

Such intermediates may also be a scripted language. I would probably let python interpret my first compiler.

And yes, some may still use an intermediate internally. Some of them may even have option to dump it.