[doublet00th]

It's not about the chip itself at all, it's about the software that runs on it. My Computer Architecture professor always used to say, nobody wants to recompile their code!

There are still binaries that were compiled in the 80s running happily on an x86 system because the chip conforming to the ISA guarantees that machine instruction will run the same as it did in the 80s.

As for "only" a different language, absolutely lots of software does this. As part of Apple's move from x86 to ARM, they implemented a software called Rosetta which translates x86 instructions into ARM (also known as emulation). The only problem with this is that there's a performance penalty you pay for the emulation, which can make using a program slower, choppier, etc.