Oh, sure, the shader language. That part doesn't really matter to me, it all gets compiled to some GPU-specific machine code in the end. Write it in GLSL, HLSL,

Oh, sure, the shader language. That part doesn't really matter to me, it all gets compiled to some GPU-specific machine code in the end. Write it in GLSL, HLSL, SPIR-V, C++, who cares really. And shader cross-compilers are already incredibly common in the industry (most write in HLSL, then translate with HLSLParser, or glsl-optimizer, or spirv-cross, etc.). When I talk about "good APIs", I'm mostly talking about the driver and CPU side of things, since that's the common bottleneck we're looking to replace with an OpenGL replacement. GPU compiler is already pretty highly optimized.