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I can't comment on the level of coder skill required to compile mobprogs, but it's definitely doable. Our mobprogs are all compiled into basically a stack and a set of instructions. Of course, it's running under our Rapture engine and so isn't compiled into C, but Rapture can run the compiled versions very quickly. We use them for all sorts of things, and haven't had to hardcode a quest in a long time. We use them now for, ####, everything from custom effects for eating food to a whorehouse where players can go to be entertained by ladies of the evening, as it were.
As you say, not compiling them does tend to limit, performance-wise, what you can do with them. We only switched to compiling them maybe a year or a year and a half ago, precisely for that reason. I'd definitely encourage larger muds who may start to run into limits on what they can do in a single server setup to work on compiled progs. It drastically increases the breadth of things you're willing to spend processor cycles on, since you'll get way more out of each cycle.
--matt
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