The awe you're describing and the "awe" of his friends are very different, AFAICT. What you describe is perfectly healthy and reasonable: GCC/etc are unquestionably complex systems that can't be fully understood without thorough long-term study and experience. Oversimplifying them would be reckless, and so the average user of them should possess a certain awe and respect for them.
But this is different from having no conception of how compilers work and how one might implement one. As complex as modern compilers are, the foundational principles still apply to them, and an understanding of these principles makes them much less awe-inspiring. I think that having a clear view of the big picture, rather than having certain areas of the picture blocked off entirely as magical black boxes, allows for better engineering choices.
But this is different from having no conception of how compilers work and how one might implement one. As complex as modern compilers are, the foundational principles still apply to them, and an understanding of these principles makes them much less awe-inspiring. I think that having a clear view of the big picture, rather than having certain areas of the picture blocked off entirely as magical black boxes, allows for better engineering choices.