Compiling is a destructive process. While you can definitely learn a lot by reading IR and figuring a program out, and while it is easy to show why programming

Compiling is a destructive process. While you can definitely learn a lot by reading IR and figuring a program out, and while it is easy to show why programming in ASM is time consuming, I don't think it makes sense to teach compiler theory and compiler passes that way. In general, moving from one language to a "higher level" or "stricter one" (such as unsafe Rust to safe Rust) requires a redesign to properly do it (if at all possible).