With a tiny caveat: most folks actually won't feel this, because GCC hasn't been included in any x86 installed base system for quite a while now. Most exposure to it for many users would have been if they were cross-building archs that still required it, as the build infrastructure would bootstrap an appropriate GCC4.2 at that time.

I think you misunderstood what I was saying - I was expecting that this post would mean that GCC would stop working, or no longer be available, for me as a user. The point is that even for a FreeBSD user - albeit a new one - the title here is unclear on what "removed GCC" means.

But FreeBSD doesn’t control what software works on FreeBSD, that is up to the individual software maintainers. What you are describing would be “GCC has removed support for FreeBSD.”

Then you really need to read up handbook again. Removing things from base never meant what you think it meant.