Is that wrong though? Compilers are "just" a kind of program that runs on our computers that afford us the convenience of writing programs in a more human friendly manner. The main argument in my mind against considering programming languages an awesomely powerful convenience would be that this is reductionist and that in the same manner, literally every invention ever was just a convenience as well.

But maybe the view of modern society as a tower built on the back of a million million one time conveniences that have since become indispensible isn't that far from the truth either?