It depends on the context as well. It is much more likely to find a bug in gfortran for solaris sparc than gcc on x86 linux, for example. The only time I keep the compiler bug in mind is when working with gcc 4.x compiler on windows.
I don't have the experience of ESR, but I find the advice a bit dangerous if taken as a general one. Especially, the idea that a heisenbug is often caused by a compiler: most likely, the heisenbug is not a heisenbug at all, but just less visible depending on the compiler flags. That was the case for the vast majority of "heisenbugs" I have encountered in C.
I don't have the experience of ESR, but I find the advice a bit dangerous if taken as a general one. Especially, the idea that a heisenbug is often caused by a compiler: most likely, the heisenbug is not a heisenbug at all, but just less visible depending on the compiler flags. That was the case for the vast majority of "heisenbugs" I have encountered in C.