interestingly enough, while this seems like an obviously good application for forth, i have never actually seen someone get to a working c compiler this way

A Forth programmer who bootstraps their own Forth probably isn't that excited about having a c compiler.

maybe i don't qualify as a forth programmer then

well, that's unfair, because https://github.com/kragen/stoneknifeforth definitely doesn't qualify as a forth, it doesn't have immediate words