Janne,
I would agree with that. However, getting acquainted with one level of undocumented complexity is one thing but two, as a part-time activity, is quite an act. That said, gfortran is not too badly commented and, with the Doxygen documentation, it is possible to get around the front-end quite easily.Well, it's not like gfortran is any better documented. At least with gcc middle-end, there is a much larger amount of people familiar with it who can concievably help.
Paul